The Mixtape with Scott

Podcast interviewI’m going to drop this week’s podcast a day early because Dr. Abadie’s doing a workshop for Mixtape Sessions later this week, and thought it would be better to just give everyone a headsup about it and bundle it with this interview too. Dr. Abadie has had a major influence on me. In 2009, I began studying the legalization of indoor sex work on public health and violence against women, a paper that would land me my first Top 5 publication with Manisha Shah, and from the start I decided to use synthetic control to do it. We were one of the early adopters in fact, and I entered into a long pen pal conversation with Alberto over the years. I asked if I could do the “real podcast interview” with him, the one that’s more of the “oral history of economics; personal stories of economists” and he agreed. (He did a shorter non-themed one abt synth last year for me for a substack I was writing abt synth). So I’m super excited and honored to have a chance to interview Dr Alberto Abadie again on the podcast. And I hope you like it.Dr. Abadie is at MIT. Before MIT, he was a professor in Harvard Kennedy School where I once heard he got a standing ovation after a lecture on econometrics. The number of econometricians teaching econometrics to non-econometricians who have gotten standing ovations is a very small set is my hunch; we all are trying to nail it, but few get it. He was one of the best speakers for me when I first saw him speak at the Northwestern causal inference workshop a decade ago (which I’m co-directing again this year with Bernie Black for those interested — here for main, here for advanced). His work spans a lot of topics. He did his doctorate at MIT under Josh Angrist in the 1990s, and then moved into a collaboration with both Josh as well as Guido Imbens with whom he wrote a series of very nice papers on inexact matching. One in econometrica 2006 where they worked out the large sample properties of the method under repeated “matching with replacement”. And another where they worked out a method for using regression adjustment to reduce the bias from inexact matching in a 2011 JASA. I’ve written about both on the substack and they’re great. Over the years, I have come to love them.The inexact matching method finds matches that minimizes the sum of squared matching discrepancies across all confounders, which is a similar objective function to synth which finds weights on donor pool units (as opposed to M:1 matching). Both methods are imputation methods — using comparison groups to impute missing counterfactuals, only one of them builds on unconfoundedness (matching) and the other on a factor model (synthetic control). Both matching and synth have been very influential, but matching predates Alberto by decades going back to the Rubin and Cochrane in the 1970s and 1960s. Alberto, on the other hand, is the author of synthetic control with Gardazebeal in a 2003 American Economic Review article studying the effect of terrorism in Basque Country on economic variables, like GDP. And it has been used now many times, including my study of sex work. But he’s done more than that. He’s done work on complier analysis in instrumental variables, a topic that I am noticing becoming more common nowadays with advances made on the leniency design, as well as his new work on clustering under sampling versus design based concepts of uncertainty. He’s a great one, and I hope you like this interview. Here’s the video: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

Hello Substack readers,I'm excited to share with you the insights from my latest podcast episode, where I had the incredible opportunity to interview Yale professor and renowned economist Steven Berry. In this week's edition, we will:* Introduce you to our esteemed guest, Steven Berry* Delve into the groundbreaking BLP model* Recap the fascinating conversation we hadMeet Steven BerrySteven Berry is the David Swensen Professor of Economics at Yale University, winner of the 1996 Frisch Medal, and a leading figure in the fields of econometrics and industrial organization. With a life that started in the Midwest, Berry's journey into economics was marked by his love for science fiction and the brilliant faculty he studied with at the University of Wisconsin, such as Chuck Manski, Gary Chamberlain, Art Goldberger, John Rust, and many others.The BLP ModelOne of Berry's most significant contributions to the field of economics is the "BLP" model, developed alongside James Levinsohn and Ariel Pakes. Their 1995 Econometrica paper, "Automobile Prices in Market Equilibrium," has had a profound impact on industrial organization and real-world applications.The BLP model offers a powerful tool for understanding demand in various competitive environments, helping both private companies and public policymakers make better decisions. You can find a link to the BLP paper here.Our Conversation with Steven BerryDuring our interview, we explored Berry's life and his experiences in economics. From his early days in the Midwest to his time at Wisconsin and beyond, we delved into the stories and influences that shaped his career. Berry shared his thoughts on the development and real-world applications of the BLP model, as well as his views on the future of industrial organization and econometrics.Our conversation with Berry was a fascinating journey through his life and the evolution of economics over the past few decades. For those who are interested in the intersection of econometrics and industrial organization, or simply curious about the personal stories of an influential economist, this interview is a must-listen.Don't miss the full conversation on this week's episode of the Mixtape with Scott podcast, available on your favorite podcast platform. And as always, be sure to like, share, and subscribe to the podcast, and stay tuned for more "explainers" on econometrics in my Substack.Until next time,Scott CunninghamScott'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

Dear Mixtape with Scott listeners,We are pleased to announce the release of our latest podcast episode, featuring an insightful conversation with Jon Roth, an exceptionally talented young econometrician from Brown University. With only three years since graduating, Jon has already made significant contributions to the field of econometrics, publishing high-profile papers on difference-in-differences in esteemed outlets such as Econometrica, Review of Economic Studies, and AER: Insights. Moreover, he has authored a timely literature review on differential timing and has an R&R at JPE: Micro on staggered rollout. In short, he has hit the ground running with many papers that no doubt will be finding their way into all of our papers soon, if they haven’t already.In this episode, Jon shares his journey, from growing up in Massachusetts to discovering his passion for economics. He speaks candidly about how his father's accomplishments as a theoretical physicist led him to believe that his potential might lie more in applied labor economics. However, through a series of events, Jon found himself drawn to econometrics, ultimately excelling in the field.We also discussed Jon's love of sports, his transition from solving problem sets to producing research, and his experience navigating the job market over three years, as he honed his professional identity.As a special opportunity for our listeners, Jon Roth will be teaching an exclusive workshop on the Mixtape Sessions platform on Friday, April 21st, starting at 9 am EST. Don't miss the chance to learn from one of the brightest minds in the field, as he covers much of his own work and more.Join me, your host Scott Cunningham, as we dive into the life and work of Jon Roth in this engaging episode of Mixtape with Scott. We hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did. Youtube video below. As always, we appreciate your support for Mixtape with Scott. If you enjoy our podcast and want to get even more from our community, consider becoming a paying subscriber to our Substack. I am working hard on trying to provide exclusive value for all paying subscribers, so stay tuned. For now it’s just the warm glow you’ll get from knowing you’re contributing!If you haven't already, please take a moment to share this episode with your friends, colleagues, and anyone you think would enjoy it. Your recommendations are incredibly valuable and help us grow our audience. Remember to also like, follow, and subscribe to Mixtape with Scott on your preferred podcast platform to stay updated on our latest episodes. And leave us a review on Spotify or Apple; those always help.Thank you for being a part of our journey as we continue to explore the fascinating stories of the people shaping the world of economics. We look forward to sharing more thought-provoking conversations with you.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 is an interview with Joseph Doyle. Joe is the Erwin H. Schell Professor of Management and Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management who has had a distinguished career as a labor economist studying a range of topics that most outside of economics do not always associate with the field — like child welfare and foster care, juvenile incarceration and its effect on high school completion and adult incarceration, and more. The welfare of children, as it turns out, has been a longstanding research focus of Dr. Doyle’s, and because I’ve written on foster care myself, and because his paper with Anna Aizer study the causal effect that juvenile incarceration has on high school completion and adult incarceration is one of my favorite applied papers ever written by economists, I have constantly gravitated back to him and his work. Dr. Doyle someone I’ve always looked up to for a variety of reasons, not just topics, but also his ingenious approaches to identification of causal effects outside the purely randomized controlled trial. After all, no one would ever entertain the possibility of randomly assigning children to incarceration even if the question of what effect it has on life outcomes is of supreme importance. And so we are dependent on the work of people like Dr. Doyle who care about the topic too, but also have the skill and seriousness of mind and heart to develop plausible strategies to answer the question — not because the methods are cute, but because the question is so vital and important that it begs to be answered. I enjoyed this hour with Dr. Doyle, and hope you do too. Please remember to share, subscribe and like the episode!And apologies the video below is messed up; I got a new computer and the Zoom wasn’t working right. So unlike usually seeing us side by side, it’s one person at a time. And I am off on naming the order of episodes — this is episode 8, not 10. 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 podcast episode, The Mixtape with Scott, I am interviewing Paul Oyer. Paul Oyer is a labor economist at Stanford University and author of several books, including "Everything I Needed to Know about Economics I learned from Online Dating", which is one of my favorite "popular general interest books explaining what economics is", as well as "An Economist Goes to the Game" which is about sports and economics. Links below for both. He's a fun, funny and interesting guy whose work in labor economics and personnel economics follows many of my own interests -- how firms hire, what they pay, discrimination, and platforms, just to name a few. I had a lot of fun interviewing Paul and hope you like it too. Thanks for your support, but I welcome even more of it by becoming a subscriber! And of course share this with you friends, family, loved ones, and especially those people you hate. Really rub it in their face with how good your taste in podcasts is.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 interviewed Mike Luca, the Lee J. Styslinger III Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Mike studies a variety of topics of high relevance to the underlying economic organization of the online sector, such as the design of online platforms, applied causal inference and data science. More to the point, his research helps organizations consume data or all types and produce insights that help them become more informed and about managerial obstacles and solutions. He is also the coauthor of "The Power of Experiments: Decision-Making in a Data Driven World" with Max Bazerman. This is part of my longer series on what I’m calling "economists in tech", which includes my interviews with:* Susan Athey (first chief economist at Microsoft, John Bates Clark award winner, and much more)* Michael Schwarz (current Microsoft chief economist), * John List (former chief economists at Uber and Lyft), * Chris Nosko (VP Head of Science and Analytics at Uber), * Kyle Kretschman (Head of Economics at Spotify),* Ronnie Kohavi (computer scientist with a long career in tech spanning decades, early promoter of A/B testing)This series is, I hope, particularly relevant to those PhD economists and adjacent workers, like data scientists and machine learners, within tech, but also those outside of tech wanting to learn more about the long story of the demand for and supply of PhD economists in tech — which I consider to be the result of a very disruptive, particularly important, technological shift that increased the value of the work that PhD economists do and can do, causing a long march of PhD economists into industry (which is likely to continue growing for a while). Which is itself part of my long term project to collect interviews that when pieced together in the longrun help tell at least a small sliver of the oral history of the last 50 years of economists across many disciplines, many parts of the world, many types of work, many departments, and beneath many influential watershed people and movements that I consider to be particularly interesting (to me). But in many ways, the oral history element, while meaningful to me, is also a convenient hook for me to listen to and help broadcast the personal stories of real people. Real people matter, and their stories matter, not because of how they connect to some larger thing, but as people in and of themselves. And as I say often at the start of each podcast, I am firmly in the camp of those who believe that we navigate our own historical lives through stories, and for many of us, that includes the personal stories of others. These stories, as I call them, function as models that help us understand ourselves as well as compasses as we try to plot out where we are in our journeys, and inform our decision making under uncertainty as we try to navigate our lives in a way that is consistent with our values and help us find our place in society. So thanks for tuning in! I hope you find this interview with Mike illuminating. Scott's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Opening music by Wes Cunningham. Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

What a pleasure it is this week to introduce my guest on the Mixtape with Scott, Dr. Pedro Sant’Anna. Had you asked me a few years ago the likelihood I’d make such a good new friend this late in life, I would not have guessed it, but from countless conversations on social media, and even more in DM on our Slack channel with two other close friends, Pedro Sant’Anna has become one of my favorite people in life. A constantly upbeat, friendly, energetic man, patient to a fault to explain every single detail of econometrics, and enjoying himself as does so, he is one of the best in the profession. He is as many of you know one of the half dozen important young econometricians that have made major contributions to the difference-in-differences research design. His productivity is intense so I can’t name them all, but the two I know best, almost by heart, are:* Callaway and Sant’Anna (2021), “Difference-in-differences with multiple time periods” Journal of Econometrics* Sant’Anna and Zhou (2020), “Doubly-robust difference-in-differences estimators”, Journal of EconometricsThe first one has over 2000 cites and it was only published a little over a year ago. He also has an Econometrica with Jon Roth on issues related to functional form and parallel trends in diff-in-diff and a review article (also with Jon Roth, but also with John Poe and Alyssa Bilinski) for anyone who wants to in one stop learn everything you need to know about diff-in-diff. In this mixtape episode, though, we learn more than just his papers. Pedro shares his story with me. I hope you like it and I hope as always you come to value both his story, but also the contemporary ongoing series I’m doing on the many stories of economists. Because to quote, Sue Johnson:“We use stories to make sense of our lives. And we use stories as models to guide us in the future. We shape stories, and then stories shape us.”Consider subscribing, sharing and possibly even supporting the substack as I continue to try and accumulate enough stories of living economists that we have those stories to help us make sense of our lives, but also an oral history of the profession. Thank you again for your support! Youtube below!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 a little out of order. Season two’s episodes are going to be a little out of order, based on what feels like the best next episode to present at that time. So I decided after doing my interview with University of Arizona professor of economics, Hide Ichimura, that I wanted to release it because I had such a delightful time talking with him. Dr. Ichimura is an econometrician whose work I’ve gotten to know more recently because it’s been experiencing a little bit of a revival (though it’s always remained very popular over the years) within the difference-in-differences literature thanks, in part, to the Sant’anna and Zhao (2020) Journal of Econometrics on robust diff-in-diff, Callaway and Sant’anna (2021) paper on differential timing, and in many ways, other papers that conduct certain kinds of imputations and estimations that are similar in spirit like Borusyak, et al’s (2022) robust efficient imputation estimator, and even Abadie and Imbens (2011) selection bias adjustment method if you squint your eyes. I had a wonderful experience talking with Dr. Ichimura today. This is sort of part of my broader interest, as I say in the intro, in interviewing econometricians who were active in the 1990s working on topics in causal inference, and to that end, I had in mine two Restuds by Dr. Ichimura with Heckman and Todd (1997) and a 1998 one in Restud also by Heckman and Todd (and the identical title!!), both on program evaluation. But I also just in general wanted to hear his story, and I’m so glad I did and that he would share it. At the end of the episode, I asked him to share with me a paper that, maybe isn’t his favorite, but that has always stuck in his mind. He shared with me Stephen Nickell’s 1979 article in Econometrica entitled “Estimating the Probability of Leaving Unemployment”. As always, opening introduction music is by Wes Cunningham (no relation).And don’t forget to subscribe, share and maybe even support this! This podcast is subsidized by your donations and my workshops! 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 pleasure of interviewing Clair Brown, a labor economist at the University of California - Berkeley. Dr. Brown’s career has spanned several topics like discrimination, industrial economics, and climate. Dr. Brown’s late career has made several turns into environmental economics, particularly climate, but also a re-envisioning of the field of economics with her book Buddhist Economics. Dr. Brown’s work has always focused on issues around welfare that are often massaged out of her models, like meaning, community and fairness in labor markets. I thoroughly enjoyed our time together, and I hope you find it interesting too. Please remember to subscribe and share!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

Time for a new podcast episode! In this week’s episode, I have the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Beatrice Cherrier, a widely recognized expert in the history of economic thought, and one of my personal favorite economists around. Beatrice is an associate professor of economics at the Center for Research in Economics and Statistics in France. She is a font of wisdom and insight about more parts of the field of economics than is found in most people who specialize in even one of those areas. But she is also a very endearing person and a pleasure to talk to, and I hope you enjoy this interview. Please remember to share and subscribe! Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe