The Mixtape with Scott

This week’s episode of the Mixtape with Scott is from 2019. It is an interview with the late Dr. William Spriggs, an economist who died in June 2023. He was a longtime professor of economics at Howard University and Chief Economist for the AFL-CIO. It was from an old series I wanted to do called “What Economists Do” — the premise being more or less what evolved into my current podcast: tell the stories of living economists and in aggregate hope that the collective story of economics is told. And Dr. Spriggs was the first I reached out to. This was filmed at a conference for mentors and mentees hosted by the American Economics Association and we were both there, so I asked him if he’d be willing to let me interview him and he graciously said yes. For two hours, we talked about Dr. Spriggs’ life — all of which was new to me, as he didn’t know me and I only knew of him by reputation, but not about his personal life. If you aren’t familiar with him, he was a man with a resume. Professor of Economics at Howard University for many years, chief economist to the AFL-CIO, and Assistant Secretary for the Department of Labor in the Obama administration. His scholarly focus was labor economics and public policy, both with an eye towards inequality and persistent structural racism. He was vocal about these things in the world, but also the profession, and he spoke with real courage and so much moral force that it made a real impression on me every time I’d been in his vicinity.  Every now and then it seems there is someone like that in America, and Dr. Spriggs was definitely one of those “someones”, at least within our profession.After I did this interview in the summer of 2019, I forgot about it. I guess I wasn’t quite ready to do the series which back then was going to be called “What Economists Do”. I put it in a dropbox folder, but then after a computer switch, had selected to sync it to the cloud rather than locally and so out of sight out of mind. So when he passed away, I searched for it, thinking it must be somewhere, then last week remembered the cloud and there it was. So, join me on this journey back to 2019, to my fascinating conversation with Dr. William Spriggs. Scott's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

Three people were awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in economics: Josh Angrist, Guido Imbens and David (“Dave”) Card. I have interviewed the first two, and today I have the pleasure of posting the last interview with Dr. Card himself. To most economists, Dr. Card needs no introduction and to be honest I’m really not even sure what to say. I will just say that one time I was having dinner with a well known labor economist who had been on the market the same year as Card, and this economist over dinner without any hint of exaggeration said simply that Card was the greatest labor economist of his generation, bar none. Other than that, I will just say some of the things about his work that has meant a lot to me. Card is “real economist”. Even more than that, he is “real labor economist”, which is the highest praise I know to give people. His knowledge of labor economic theory is deep and expansive. It rolls off his tongue effortlessly. You poke him, he bleeds income elasticities and a myriad of models that he holds to with a light grip. But he was one of the booster rockets on the “credibility revolution”, too, that launched the social sciences into a new level of empirical work. When he began working, labor was in the throes of a fairly deep empirical crisis, and we discussed that in this interview. I learned many things I didn’t know, and he also corrected things I took for granted to be fact, like how I interpreted Bob Lalonde’s job market paper and what it meant. Many of his studies seemed to be lightning rods on multiple levels — both because they were unexpected null results of prevailing neoclassical wisdom, but also because the studies forced the profession to have deeper conversations about epistemology. What is a model? What is evidence? What does it mean to believe something? When are beliefs justified? What makes them warranted? These were not topics that I think Dr. Card himself seemed particularly interested in, but it’s very hard not to see in the anger that surrounded him and those studies people in the throes of being unable, unwilling or incapable of changing their mind even a small bit.This is in fact the story of the practical empirical work of data workers, though — marshaling convincing evidence, going up against a strong scientific blockade, and successful persuasion looking one way at the time that looks very different later. We saw a complete rejection of the facts with Semmelweis’s hand washing hypothesis, and John Snow’s germ theory, for instance. Both men published work that looking back is so obviously correct but at the time seemed to not move the needle on policymaker and scientist’s opinion. I’m not saying that Dr. Card had that experience with his classic works on the minimum wage or immigration — he did after all win the John Bates Clark award and the Nobel Prize. But listening to his story about what he and his colleague and coauthor Alan Krueger experienced at the time when it was published, I can only say that I think sometimes we forget how intense these academic fights can be. We talk a little at different times about this speech he did in 2012 at Michigan about “design vs model based identification”, also, and if you want to read that, it’s here.I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I enjoyed being a part of it. It’s around 90 minutes long, but it felt like 30 minutes. At the 60 min mark, I told him well I guess we need to stop and he graciously gave me another half hour. He also makes an announcement in the interview that I think wasn’t public knowledge, making me feel a little like Matt Drudge with breaking news. But no spoilers — you’ll have to listen for yourself. Thank you again for tuning in. If you like these interviews, please share them! And if you really like them, consider supporting them with a subscription. But no worries if you don’t want to. Have a great rest of your week! And remember — clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose. Scott's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

Marina Della Guista is a pioneer in the economics of Sex Work who started her career at the University of Reading and is now a professor at the University of Turin. And when I first started studying sex work, I went looking for what papers economists had written. There weren’t many, but the ones that had been written were fascinating. Many, though not all, were applied theory papers. I remember with great fondness studying new models gaining rich insight into how other economists thought this niche subject in labor economics. One of the studies that left an incredible mark on my orientation in studying sex work was “Who is Watching” by Marina della Giusta, Maria di Tommasso and Steiner Strøm. It was a paper of supply and demand for sex work in which stigma was part of the cost structure but interestingly stigma was also endogenous and determined jointly in equilibrium with the size of the work force and clientele as well as wages paid and received. As the market grew, as the more people engaged in this illicit activity expanded, the stigma penalty itself declined suggesting to me in my own work that if the internet was expanded sex work, or if it was legalized, the stigma under prohibition and clandestine markets might lift some. The degree to which it did would depend on the elasticities in the world.It was the sort of Becker style reasoning that I found so attractive — the idea that things we think of as exogenous and unchanging may be endogenous, governed by formal processes and that technology may shape those norms, for good or bad.Since then, I have become friends with all three authors, and one of them very close. I met all three last November when I visited Turin to do a workshop and serve on a committee. But Marina and I have been friends even before then. She was active on Twitter when I had been too, so we’d deepened our friendship there, but even beyond that I think we just had made regular communication a part of our life. Marina is an excellent labor economist with both sides of the applied skill set — empiricism and applied theory. She has continued to steadfastly worked on stigma in sex work as well as studying the so-called Nordic model, a leading contender in augmenting standard prohibition by lifting the bands on supply but maintaining the prohibition on demand. Traditional tax theory say the impact on wages and the distribution of burden is the same whether you target supply or demand though being the dutiful empiricist she along with Maria have attempted to determine to what degree the end demand approach changes risk attitudes and any evidence of behavioral change using survey data in UK. In this podcast she shares her journey through labor and gender, and not being an American, it reminds I hope everyone that the United States economics community is rich and spreads around the globe. If you find these podcast interviews interesting and valuable, please share it with colleagues and students, and consider following and subscribing and supporting it. These interviews are an oral history of the profession as told through the personal stories of economists. Scott's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

This week’s episode of The Mixtape with Scott is an interview with an old professor of mine from when I was at the University of Georgia, Dr. George Selgin. George was one of several really interesting professors I was fortunate enough to get to know while a PhD student there. One anecdote of the impression he made on me was that he was a handful of people who ever read my dissertation. He gave back to me a massive marked up document full of suggestions and a lot of red underlines — not just to the job market paper, but all three chapters. Which was remarkable for two reasons: he was not an applied microeconomist and he wasn’t even on my dissertation committee. He also came to my defense and was perhaps the single most vocal one there. Being able to answer his questions was one of my happier moments of that late end of that period, as it felt like George took me very seriously and treated me as a peer. He did that with everyone. And that could be a bit intimidating since being George’s peer usually meant some pretty serious conversations. But George was like that — he was extremely engaged in my education, but also to many others as well. I never took any courses from him, because I early on sorted into labor and econometrics, but I watched George closely all the time and interacted with him a lot. He gave each person his full attention, read their papers very closely no matter the field, and in seminars was always on top of everything. It was a lesson in areas I found to be valuable like individuality as an economist and taking ideas serious enough to battle with them. George is a monetary economist and economic historian. He was one of a handful of reasons I decided to go to Georgia at all. He had written a short pamphlet I’d somehow found in college on something obscure (to many anyway) called “praxeology”. That’s something from Austrian economics, and originally I really thought economics was Austrian economics. Coming from a literature background, I’d never had any economics classes, so what I knew, I knew from reading classical liberals like Hayek, Mises, Milton Friedman and a couple others. I was spent a lot of time reading people from the Austrian tradition and the Chicago tradition, from the early to mid 20th century. I knew about George because of that praxeology pamphlet which I read backwards and forwards, over and over, trying to understand everything I could. Imagine my surprise when first year coursework did not involve any praxeology! “I was told there would be no math” I often thought to myself. So George is a hero of sorts of mine. He is an excellent writer, a very careful thinker, a wonderful economist and an inspiring professor. And he’s going to be part of a longer series I’d like to do on what I’ll just be calling “the two wings of the profession: Austrian economics and the heterodox traditions”. Although that’s a mouthful. I am hoping to do interviews with places like George Mason University, as well as U Mass Amherst, the economists from the old Notre Dame economics department (now defunct), Riverside and more. These are important parts of our profession’s history, with many interesting stories, and I don’t think many people know them. But I’m hoping you will find them interesting. They’ll be trickling in as I continue making progress towards them, but expect them to be scattered across season 2 and 3. If you like the podcast, consider liking, following, sharing, and subscribing! The podcast is a labor of love. I love the stories of our profession and the people in our profession a lot. I know others do too and I hope these stories speak to you as you continue navigating your own journey, wherever you are and whoever you are. Peace!Scott's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

On this week's episode of my podcast, The Mixtape with Scott, I got to meet and talk with the labor economist, Steve Pischke, a distinguished professor at the London School of Economics. Many listeners will automatically recognize that name for his joint venture with Josh Angrist in creating what is probably, without a doubt, the textbook of my generation in causal inference and applied micro econometrics — Mostly Harmless Econometrics. Like Angrist, Pischke earned his PhD in economics from Princeton, contributing significantly to my ongoing exploration of the Industrial Relations Section, one of a handful of ground zeroes for the “credibility revolution” within microeconomics, from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Pischke, through his personal scholarship and the influential Mostly Harmless Econometrics, had a pivotal role in pushing out this change in the profession. In this episode, Pischke takes us on his journey from Europe to Princeton, sharing his shift from macro to micro (a road less traveled for sure). We explore the years that shaped his life and academic pursuits, providing a unique insight into his personal and professional development.For those new to the podcast, though, here’s the premise: this podcast sets out to weave an oral tapestry of the economics profession over the past half-century. It's not just a history lesson; it's primarily a podcast of the personal voyages of economists, their lives recounted from being a kid through their career. I choose themes that I find interesting obviously, but those interests change over time. For a while, I’ve been engrossed in the 2021 Nobel Laureates context — Princeton and Harvard, faculty, collaborators, and students. But mainly I am interested in the people, not for their inputs in a larger story, but rather as people themselves. The oral history in my mind is a collection of swatches that make up a patchwork quilt. The oral history is just a story of the people who have their stories and I think you can’t understand one without the other. But ultimately what matters are the people. It’s just that economists seem to more often be interviewed for their papers or their opinions than their lives, but their lives to me matter far more than their papers or opinions. So this dual focus tries to ride a fine line between the historical context and the individual narratives, considering every personal story not just as an integral part of a larger narrative, but also as a standalone almost infinitely valuable treasure.The creation of this podcast stems from my firm belief in the intrinsic value of every person's journey, a belief that these shared stories are as meaningful to those people as it is others listening. My hope is that not only will some listener out there learn from these personal accounts but may also, by hearing someone else’s story, be helped in navigating their own life journey — your life journey. So please here I have a chance to share with you about Steve Pischke!As always, thank you for your support. If you like the podcast, share it with others, and even considering supporting it through subscription. But it’s meant to be freely given so don’t feel obligated either. Scott's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

A person I had always wanted to get to know Dr. Elizabeth Stuart, a professor at Johns Hopkins in their biostatistics department. I knew about her for a long time before I met her because of her expansive work on a variety of issues in the area of “matching” and unconfoundedness. She did her PhD, as it turned out, at Harvard at the end of the 1990s and early 2000s around the time when Guido Imbens was still there in the economics department, and Don Rubin in the statistics department. At Harvard she worked with people like Don Rubin, her dissertation adviser, as well as Gary King, one of her collaborators and someone else I’ve interviewed on the podcast, and so I wanted to talk to her to try and piece together more of the progression of causal inference throughout the social sciences in the late 20th and early 21st century, not just through writing, but maybe even moreso through students and faculty placements at departments around the world.But these big ideas are in many ways just the “hook”, as I have said, to build a mental map of why I select certain people for the podcast. Dr. Stuart is an important scholar in her own right. She has spent a career being driven by questions about health and selected into statistics as a way of enhancing her own ability to contribute fruitfully to large and important policy questions regarding health. After graduating from Harvard in 2004, she went to Mathematica before then moving to Johns Hopkins school of public health where she steadily moved forward through tenure to associate then full professor. She is now a professor in the department of mental health, the department of biostatistics, and the department of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins. And she is now leading up pioneering new curriculum options for students there as well as moving into a new administrative position within the university.I learned things I didn’t know, such as her brief flirtation with going to Princeton’s economics program (the economics students, though, seemed miserable so she opted against it). Since I’ve been also obsessed with trying to better understand Princeton’s economics program throughout the 1970s to 1990s, I was surprised to again realize what a small world it was that Dr. Stuart herself skipped over that like a stone over water before landing at the center of the causal inference universe itself — Harvard’s statistics department. So this was a fun interview. And I hope you enjoy learning more about Dr. Stuart’s life. If you enjoy this podcast interview, or any of the others, please share it, as well as follow, like and even consider subscribing! The substack goes to subsidizing the cost of paying “my guy” who turns the raw interviews into usable podcast and YouTube videos. Thank you again for all your support!Scott's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

Interview with Jason FurmanIt has been a common story throughout the last two seasons that while not every economist entered economics with a burning desire to affect public policy, a large number had. But of those that had said that usually had in mind scholarship as the primary mechanism by which policy was affected. In this week’s episode, I am joined by an economist who has spent his career very close to the machinations of economic policy itself — Dr. Jason Furman. Jason, currently a professor in Harvard's Kennedy School, took the road less traveled from being a Harvard student who left “all bug dissertation” to work with Joe Stiglitz in the Clinton administration, came back, then went back to Washington to the Obama administration, then back to Harvard again, this time as a professor!Our conversation moved from Jason's personal journey as a kid through high school and then carving his own path within and through the economics profession. It’s the stories like Jason’s that I’m trying to learn by listening to the personal stories of living economists and the hope that over time, through the collection of hundreds of them over the next several years, create a large collage of the profession’s story. An oral history of the profession told through the personal stories of economists. And this week’s story is Jason’s. As always, if you enjoy the show, please don't forget to like, share, and follow me on your preferred platform (especially Substack!). If you haven't yet, do consider subscribing to the podcast, so you don't miss out on any of these incredible stories. Your support helps bring these narratives to life.Scott's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

Derek Neal interviewIt’s Tuesday which is usually the day of the week I release a new episode for season two of the Mixtape with Scott. These interviews consist of me interviewing an economist, though sometimes I deviate and interview other social scientists or authors. The idea of the podcast is a little out there: “to be an oral history of the economics profession, focusing selectively on topics from the last 50 years, by listening to the personal stories of the economists themselves”Topics include things like causal inference and econometrics, Princeton Industrial Relation Section in the 80s and 90s, economists in the tech sector, Gary Becker’s former students, and “public policy” more generally. Each episode is about an hour though sometimes they go longer, and one time it went on for 3 hours (I haven’t posted that one yet). We start when they were little and usually end with where they are now, pausing often to discuss some of the more memorable work they have done. This week I interviewed Derek Neal, a labor economist and professor of economics at the University of Chicago. If I had to summarize one thing that described this interview, and what I learned from Derek's life, it would be that he has been riding on a knife edge of close calls and good luck. Take for instance how fortunate he was that his economics professor at small college in Georgia where he grew up had been denied tenure at Kentucky. Arriving at this college, he took it upon himself to prepare students for grad school by teaching them not just economics, but through independent studies tons of the math that they did not have access to. And Derek was one of them. Or Bill Johnson, his adviser at Virginia, who helped him learn about the important craft of writing. Or the famous Sherwin Rosen who took Derek under his wing at Chicago the second he arrived there as an assistant professor. Derek was generous in our interview. He peeled back the curtain a little and walked me through his life through all this serendipity, the “unmerited grace”, as he calls it, to where he is now. Unmerited grace tends to create within the recipient a sense of calling to do the same for others, and the sense I get, and the rumors I hear from others, is that Derek works hard to be for others what his mentors had been for him. I was told by a former student of his just this week that Derek was an incredible adviser, “but very tough”. A description I’ve heard from others whose papers he edited when he was editor at the Journal of Political Economy, too. For people, like me, who love the stories of the old economists at the University of Chicago, hearing more about people like Sherwin Rosen (who hasn’t come up before on the show) and Gary Becker (who has) should delight you. It was also good to have a southerner whose drawl matched my own. You be the judge who carries it better — me or Derek. I hope you find this emerging mosaic of stories of our profession of the last 50 years as interesting as me. I am appreciative of all these people giving me an hour of their time and sharing their stories and the stories around them as they followed their own path. I hope you hear their story, but as corny as it sounds, our story and your story too. Hearing stories, listening to stories, and telling stories are important to me, and I’m glad I get to share these with you. So thanks for listening and tuning in. Don’t forget to like, share, follow and subscribe! Scott's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

In this week’s interview on The Mixtape with Scott, I had the opportunity to meet with the James Orin Murfin Professor of Political Science at Princeton University, Dr. Rocío Titiunik. Within the world of applied econometric methodology, Dr. Titiunik is well known for her theoretical work on regression discontinuity design. Her work with coauthors like Sebastian Calonico, Matias Cattaneo, and Max Farrell has shaped the landscape of applied econometrics through their innovative work in econometrics as well as their construction of numerous software packages in R, Stata and now python of practical utility. But she is a dual threat quarterback who is both an important contemporary quantitative methodologist as well as an influential political scientist whose applied work explores the intersection of political institutions and causal inference. That work has been instrumental in expanding our understanding of political participation, legislative behavior, and the intricacies of elections and representation.However, there's more to Rocío than the accolades on her resume. Beneath the scholarly achievements and methodological innovations is the story of a journey that will, I think, surprise many listeners. We often look at accomplished people and just assume that all the pieces fell into place for them from the moment they stepped foot into academia. But Rocío tells a different story about her path. She talks openly about her first introduction to economics occurring, not through statistics and econometrics, but theory and literature. Her entrance into Berkeley’s celebrated ag Econ PhD program happened almost serendipitously. And even while there, she was unsure how all the different parts of her personality might form within her — or if they ever would. During our conversation, she opened up about the struggles, uncertainties, and the feeling of being lost in the vast tapestry of the economics profession. Her openness and authenticity were refreshing and the interview provided a stark reminder that even the most successful among us grapple with similar doubts and fears, just like the rest of us.This conversation offers more than just an overview of Rocio's professional accomplishments. It paints a portrait of a person who, despite her status in academia, remains grounded and relatable. Her story is one of perseverance and self-discovery that will resonate with anyone who has ever questioned their path or grappled with finding their unique fit in their chosen field.Join me in this week's episode as we journey through Rocio's life, her work, and the lessons she's gleaned along the way. As much as it is an exploration of her contributions to political methodology, it is also a celebration of the human experience in all its complexity. And if you want to learn more from Dr. Titiunik’s work, you can come to her upcoming workshop at Mixtape Sessions where for three days she will be teaching about regression discontinuity design. Please remember to like, share and subscribe!Scott's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

In this week's episode of the Mixtape with Scott, I’m taking a break from interviewing economists to post a podcast interview with a non-economist, the historian Mike Jay. Mike Jay is a historian of medicine and I interviewed him last year as part of a now somewhat defunct project on the emerging medical reforms in the US and around the world related to "psychedelic medications". I felt that as these were happening fast, it would be good for those health economists and policy advocates to learn more about it, and sometimes that means talking to the non-scientists who have written about it as well as the scientists. I found Mike because he wrote a fascinating book on the global history of mescaline published through Yale Press who also published my book. I devoured that book during Covid. I spent Covid lock down studying everything I could about contemporary but also historical psychedelic medicine which included the MAPS trials on MDMA, the studies by Roland Griffiths and his colleagues on psychedelics, and others. But I was also interested in the lost work of scientists from the 50s and 60s and the psychotherapies that grew out of it. Mike'ss book on the history of mescaline was absolutely riveting. He’s a great writer and I highly recommend him. But I also recommend him because he wasn't always a writer (who was?). He aspired to something else and more or less transitioned into it as his career evolved. I thought hearing that type of story might be interesting to others curious about their talents as a writer to hear what it was like for someone else. Mike also has a new book out you may want to check out. I haven’t read it but it’s a continuation of this work he’s been doing on the history of psychedelics. So, again, thanks for tuning it to the Mixtape with Scott. Please like, follow and share! And if you want to support this work, please go over to my substack (causalinf.substack.com) and hit subscribe! Scott's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe