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♪ [music] ♪

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- [Narrator] Welcome 
to Nobel Conversations.

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In this episode,
Josh Angrist and Guido Imbens,

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sit down with Isaiah Andrews 
to discuss the key ingredients

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in their Nobel-winning
collaboration.

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Josh and Guido, first, 
congratulations on the Nobel Prize!

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Thank you.

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- [Isaiah] The work you did 
together, particularly the work

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on the Local Average 
Treatment Effect,

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or LATE framework

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was cited as one of the big reasons
you won the prize.

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At the same time, you only
overlapped at Harvard for a year--

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if I'm remembering correctly--

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it would be great to hear 
a bit more

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about how you started 
this collaboration

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and what made your working
relationship productive.

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Are there ways in which you felt 
like you complimented each other,

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what got things started
on such a productive trajectory?

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Your job talk, as I recall, Guido,
it wasn't very interesting

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but I think it was 
a choice-based sampling--

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It was. It was.
[laughter]

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I was a very marginal hire there

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because they didn't 
actually interview me

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on the regular job market,

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but I think they were 
very desperate to get someone else

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to actually teach their courses.

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It was after they had 
a couple of seminars already

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and they're still looking 
in econometrics,

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- so Gary called me and kind of--
- [Josh] Gary Chamberlain?

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Gary Chamberlain called me and
interviewed me over the telephone.

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He said, "Okay, well, 
why don't you come out

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and give a talk?"

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- [Josh] I remember this talk 
a little bit.

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I remember the dinner that 
you and Gary and I had.

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I remember not being very excited
about your job market paper,

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but I saw that Gary was and
luckily, Gary's view prevailed...

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Yes.

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- [Josh] ...and Harvard 
made you an offer

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and I think we started talking to 
each other pretty pretty soon

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after you arrived
in the fall of 1990, right?

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As I said, I came and I didn't
have a very clear agenda.

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I was a little intimidated
getting there.

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But Gary kind of said, 
"No, you should talk to Josh."

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You should go to the labor seminar,
kind of see what these people do.

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They're doing very 
interesting things there."

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I listened to Gary.

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As we did.

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As we did in the those days 
and ever since.

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I think it helped that 
we were neighbors.

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We both lived in Harvard's
junior faculty housing,

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partly because housing costs
were very high in Cambridge

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relative to our salary, 
which was very low.

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I think it also made a difference,

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neither of us came from Cambridge,

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so there were a lot of MIT people

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who already had
their whole networks,

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kind of our collaborators.

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♪ [music] ♪

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- [Josh] Well, I think
we figured out

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a mode of working together, also.

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We had kind of a regular date, 
so we were neighbors

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and we often did 
our laundry together.

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We didn't have laundry
machines at our apartments.

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But we used to do our laundry
and we were talking

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and you had a way 
of fairly systematically,

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addressing questions that
would come up in our discussions

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and the one thing that 
I was very impressed by,

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our early interaction,
is you would follow up.

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You would write some things down.

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Looking back at those days,
sort of clearly,

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I just had a lot more time 
to actually think.

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I look at my junior
colleagues now--

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[Guido] You don't have time 
to think now.

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[Josh] No, but for me that is 
kind of one thing,

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but I feel now a lot of 
my junior colleagues

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don't actually have a lot 
of time to think.

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People are just doing 
so many projects,

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and it's actually so hard

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and there's so much pressure 
on people to publish.

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I remember spending a lot of time 
sitting in my office

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and thinking, 
"Wow, what shall I do now?"

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[laughter]

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But it would give me a lot of time

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to actually think about 
these problems

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and trying to figure it them out

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and I could actually go to seminars

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and then the next day have coffee 
or lunch with Josh or Gary

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and actually talk about 
those things.

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- [Isaiah] You guys 
weren't actually

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at Harvard together all that long,

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you started working
together pretty quickly.

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Were you both in the mindset that 
you were looking for co-authors,

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or looking for a particular type
of types of co-authors at the time

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or was it more sort of 
fortuitous than that?

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- [Josh] I think we were lucky.

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I don't remember
that I was looking.

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I think, it was more fortuitous.

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I said I came in, 
I'd done my job market paper,

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and another paper for my thesis

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and I was just very happy 
to come to Harvard

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and suddenly there were all these
seminars to go to,

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and lots of interesting people 
to talk to,

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but it wasn't a very
conscious thing on my part.

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Looking back, I think there
was a moment for me,

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where I was discussing 
instrumental variables,

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potential outcomes, 
treatment effects with Guido

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and we had
a pretty good discussion,

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but then he also sent me some notes

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and the notes were very methodical
write-up of our discussion

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and what you thought,

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we had been concluding 
in a fairly formal way

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and I thought, 
"Well, that's great."

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Talk is cheap, right, 
but with somebody...

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- [Guido] Yeah, but--
- ...really writes out their story.

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- [Guido] For me, it really helps
writing things down

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and I do remember working with Josh

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and sitting in my office 
and writing things out

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and you guys have all
had the discussions with Gary

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where afterwards we need 
to then sit down

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and actually write things up

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to figure out exactly 
what was going on.

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I think the other thing 
we had, Guido,

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is we had some 
very concrete questions

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that came from applications.

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- [Guido] Yeah.

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A lot of econometrics, in my view,

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that we were schooled in 
was about models,

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here's a model and what can 
you say about this model?

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I think we were thinking about, 
here's a particular scenario,

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draft eligibility is an instrument
for whether you serve in the Army.

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What do we learn from that?

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- [Guido] That's right.

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That's right, and that's sort of 
where your influence

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on the way I do research now 
is still very clear--

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♪ [music] ♪

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- [Isaiah] Zooming out 
a little bit, just thinking about

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when you guys started 
working on this,

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when you started working together,

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any thoughts for folks

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who are just interested in
finding productive

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co-authors being productive?

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I mean, Guido already mentioned
the importance of having time,

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right, which it is.

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It is very easily not to have 
a lot of time to think--

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You definitely have to make time.

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That's a great question 
though, Isaiah,

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and I tell my students that

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you should pick your co-authors 
as carefully,

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maybe more carefully 
than you pick your spouse.

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You want to find co-authors who,

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you have some complementarity

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and that's what makes 
a strong relationship.

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You don't want to work 
with somebody

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who sees the world exactly like you

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and as much as Guido 
and I agree about things,

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we often disagree 
about things to this day

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and it's fruitful to have 
those discussions

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and we had complimentary skills.

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I was very empirical. 
I'm not really an abstract thinker.

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Guido was great at figuring out 
what the principles were.

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Yeah, that's right and I totally
agree, kind of [inaudible].

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These are incredibly
important relationships

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and you see a lot of
people working together

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and not necessarily 
working very well

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and then it's very hard often 
to get out of this relationship.

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A good partnering is a
beautiful thing, like a marriage.

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It produces wonderful children,

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the fruits of the scholarship are
potentially wonderful

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and they exceed the capacity of
the partners to do it on their own

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but a bad co-authorship 
can be very destructive

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and time consuming and painful,
just like a bad marriage.

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Arguments may start about 
who did what when

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and intellectual property
type issues,

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especially when it when 
it goes a little sour

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and somebody thinks the other party
is not pulling their weight.

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There's more co-authorship
now in economics,

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I think that's been documented, 
much more.

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- [Guido] Yes.

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There's more teams
and there's larger teams

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and I think that's great, 
I love working on teams.

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We do work on schools 
with big teams.

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I work often with PI teammates 
like Parag Pathak and David Autor

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and then a team of 
graduate students,

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but I see that the students 
are not always,

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in some ways they're a little 
too promiscuous,

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in my view, in their partnering.

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They don't think it through.

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It's difficult to think it through.

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I think, for me, working
with people always has involved

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spending a lot of one-on-one
time with people,

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you need to figure out 
how they think

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and what kind of problems 
they're interested in

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and how they think about 
these problems,

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how they like to write, 
to make that--

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And it takes some maturity on
everybody's part.

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- Yes. Yes.
- [Isaiah] In what sense?

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Just in the sense of knowing 
what's going to work for them,

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knowing when things are
versus aren't working?

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- [Josh] Maturity in the
sense of having some judgment

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to be able to face it honestly,
if it's not going well,

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sometimes you have to have 
some difficult discussions.

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Is it worth continuing?

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"I was hoping you would do this, 
and you didn't,"

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maybe it turns out 
there's some feeling

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in the other direction, 
the same way.

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And Josh is very good
[chuckles]

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in the being honest,
part from the beginning,

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- [Josh] For better or worse.

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- [Guido] I would write this stuff 
and then I remember

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the first version of the paper 
with Rubin,

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Josh was in Israel at the time,

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Don and I were in Cambridge

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and so I would talk 
with Don regularly,

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but Don wasn't really doing
much writing in those days,

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I would write things 
and then I would fax them to Josh

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and they would come back, 
first page just one big cross, "No,"

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second page, one big line, "No"

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and that would go for awhile
but he still does that.

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I sent him the first draft 
of my Nobel lecture,

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and Josh goes, 
"No, no!"

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I've gotten some PDF comments 
like that from Josh, very helpful.

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Omit needless words.

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I have few co-authors
who are willing to do that.

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Especially as you get older, 
it's harder to put up with that.

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I would find it harder now to start
working with people who did that

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early on in a co-author 
relationship.

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It's also very hard because 
you need to have enough trust.

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Josh, for being willing 
to be very critical,

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he was also willing 
to admit being wrong.

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♪ [music] ♪

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- [Josh] But you have to be on
the lookout for good partners,

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somebody who can help you 
answer questions

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that you can't answer yourself.

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I think there's a natural tendency 
for people to gravitate

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to people who are similar 
in outlook and skills

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and that's not as useful.

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- [Guido] Josh is right, nowadays 
it's very tempting

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to find people who think 
about the same problems

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you're already thinking about,
who think along the same lines

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and that may not lead 
to very novel stuff.

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But at the same time finding people

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who actually have 
very different ideas,

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it's going to take a lot of time.

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Guido, you mentioned in passing 
how working with Josh

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has influenced how you do research,

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could you say a little more 
about that?

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I'd also be interested 
to hear from Josh,

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did working with Guido influence 
the way that you do research?

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- [Guido] Nowadays, I'm much 
more conscious of the fact that,

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for me, good economic research

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comes out of talking to people 
doing empirical work,

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and it's really not reading 
econometrica

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or the reading the stats journals,

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but it's actually talking to people
doing empirical work,

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going to the empirical seminars.

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When I was at Berkeley,

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David Carr and Raj Chetty, 
as colleagues there

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and I would talk to them 
and listen to them,

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trying to figure out

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how are they solving their problems
and other things there

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where I'm not really quite happy 
with the way they're doing things

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and trying to look for 
methodological problems,

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where there's some more 
general solutions possible.

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I tried to tell it to my students
that I encourage them to work

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as research assistants also,

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for the people doing empirical work
at Stanford.

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There was no subbing what I learned
while I was in graduate school,

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but it really came out of 
working with Josh,

00:13:25.600 --> 00:13:26.990
as well as talking to Gary,

00:13:26.990 --> 00:13:30.367
Gary was always encouraging 
of doing that

00:13:30.367 --> 00:13:31.860
and because he done that himself,

00:13:31.860 --> 00:13:36.210
he'd worked with on empirical 
problems with Zvi Griliches

00:13:37.810 --> 00:13:39.500
early in his career.

00:13:39.500 --> 00:13:40.500
Yeah.

00:13:40.500 --> 00:13:44.600
Well, I became more more interested
in the econometric theory

00:13:45.410 --> 00:13:47.100
through our interaction,

00:13:47.100 --> 00:13:51.960
and I think empiricists are often 
impatient with econometric theory,

00:13:51.960 --> 00:13:55.040
partly because empirical work is
very time-consuming,

00:13:55.040 --> 00:13:59.100
and you may have a sense 
that something is

00:13:59.300 --> 00:14:00.740
convincing and sensible

00:14:00.740 --> 00:14:04.100
and you haven't really fully 
made the case for that,

00:14:04.100 --> 00:14:05.100
but you're convinced

00:14:05.100 --> 00:14:07.005
and that motivates you 
to pursue it,

00:14:07.860 --> 00:14:09.729
like the draft lottery story.

00:14:10.604 --> 00:14:12.441
I was pretty sure that was
worth doing

00:14:14.420 --> 00:14:19.613
and I came away from 
working with Guido

00:14:19.613 --> 00:14:22.348
seeing that there was 
the potential to say something

00:14:22.733 --> 00:14:25.220
more than just about 
that particular problem,

00:14:26.560 --> 00:14:29.307
and I think over the those early
years in the 90s,

00:14:31.600 --> 00:14:33.360
our thinking evolved together

00:14:33.360 --> 00:14:35.500
that there's actually 
a framework here,

00:14:35.500 --> 00:14:37.270
a way to solve a lot of problems

00:14:37.270 --> 00:14:40.700
and I think that that is the power
of the LATE framework,

00:14:40.700 --> 00:14:42.630
is it answers a lot of questions.

00:14:42.630 --> 00:14:44.500
♪ [music] ♪

00:14:44.500 --> 00:14:46.300
- [Isaiah] In some sense, 
did you find that,

00:14:46.300 --> 00:14:48.560
email versus facts 
versus in-person,

00:14:48.560 --> 00:14:51.462
the medium mattered
to how collaboration went

00:14:51.462 --> 00:14:53.190
or they're ways that you felt like

00:14:53.190 --> 00:14:54.760
it was the most useful 
to collaborate?

00:14:55.300 --> 00:14:57.361
To me, I think 
what matters most is,

00:14:58.251 --> 00:15:00.588
initially you have a period of--

00:15:00.588 --> 00:15:02.150
We needed that initial period,

00:15:02.150 --> 00:15:06.477
that was very intense with 
almost daily interaction

00:15:06.477 --> 00:15:08.358
and we also became friends.

00:15:08.900 --> 00:15:13.512
You don't develop the kind of 
friendship, electronically usually

00:15:13.512 --> 00:15:15.000
[laughter]

00:15:15.000 --> 00:15:18.731
but once you have that foundation 
you can be pen pals

00:15:19.300 --> 00:15:24.314
and we did use email, 
though it wasn't as useful then

00:15:25.500 --> 00:15:28.400
but it worked, 
we definitely had a lot of faxes.

00:15:28.400 --> 00:15:31.300
I still have these faxes, 
long faxes

00:15:33.330 --> 00:15:36.885
and then in the summer, 
I would come to Cambridge,

00:15:36.885 --> 00:15:40.300
usually to the NBR meetings 
and hang around for a few weeks

00:15:40.300 --> 00:15:41.949
and you visited me in Israel.

00:15:41.949 --> 00:15:44.000
I visited in Israel.

00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:48.400
But yeah, there was good foundation
from that that year

00:15:49.000 --> 00:15:51.100
and in some sense that was enough.

00:15:51.800 --> 00:15:53.300
Nowadays,

00:15:53.300 --> 00:15:56.600
I have the co-authors
in lots of different places,

00:15:56.600 --> 00:15:59.100
but it's always been important

00:15:59.100 --> 00:16:01.380
to spend some time with people 
in the same place,

00:16:01.380 --> 00:16:04.900
so you understand how they work, 
how they think,

00:16:05.800 --> 00:16:07.350
even to the point that,

00:16:07.350 --> 00:16:08.490
you know when 
they actually respond,

00:16:08.490 --> 00:16:10.267
whether they respond quickly 
or whether that means,

00:16:10.267 --> 00:16:11.710
they're not actually doing anything

00:16:11.710 --> 00:16:15.100
or that mean they're thinking hard 
about a problem

00:16:15.100 --> 00:16:17.300
and they just take longer,

00:16:18.020 --> 00:16:21.707
but you do need to
develop some understanding there.

00:16:21.707 --> 00:16:23.814
♪ [music] ♪

00:16:23.814 --> 00:16:26.900
- [Isaiah] We've talked about 
how your collaboration started,

00:16:26.900 --> 00:16:31.000
maybe just to step back slightly,
were they're sort of features about

00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:34.000
the environment at Harvard 
or in Cambridge, at the time,

00:16:34.000 --> 00:16:35.980
which you felt contributed to it?

00:16:36.290 --> 00:16:37.920
Coming from Brown,

00:16:37.920 --> 00:16:42.174
I felt it was very intimidating place
because it clearly was a very, very

00:16:43.500 --> 00:16:45.200
impressive set of people.

00:16:46.590 --> 00:16:48.620
Zvi Griliches was there, 
Dale Jorgensen--

00:16:49.350 --> 00:16:53.610
Gary, Jerry Hausman, Whitney Newey,
sometimes Jamie Robins.

00:16:53.890 --> 00:16:55.900
I mean, my view of that 
in retrospect,

00:16:55.900 --> 00:16:58.000
I can't say I loved every
minute of every talk

00:16:58.000 --> 00:16:59.270
I ever gave in that Workshop,

00:16:59.270 --> 00:17:00.990
but that was the highest powered,

00:17:00.990 --> 00:17:02.670
that was the group 
you wanted to reach

00:17:03.600 --> 00:17:07.664
and you would get extraordinarily 
insightful feedback,

00:17:07.664 --> 00:17:10.600
even if it wasn't always 
easy to swallow.

00:17:11.300 --> 00:17:12.500
Yeah, and I have for a while,

00:17:12.500 --> 00:17:15.940
I would basically give 
a talk every semester

00:17:15.940 --> 00:17:19.000
because we didn't have any money
to invite people.

00:17:19.710 --> 00:17:22.000
Gary would say, 
"Well, why don't you give a talk?"

00:17:22.000 --> 00:17:23.260
[laughter]

00:17:26.800 --> 00:17:30.758
That was the arena for young people
with our interest.

00:17:30.758 --> 00:17:33.098
- [Guido] Yeah, it was really 
very impressive,

00:17:33.098 --> 00:17:35.448
but it was also quite tough--

00:17:35.448 --> 00:17:37.128
It was intimidating.

00:17:37.800 --> 00:17:41.000
People there had very strong
views on what they thought was

00:17:42.810 --> 00:17:44.310
the way you should do econometrics,

00:17:44.310 --> 00:17:46.310
the way the direction 
things should go,

00:17:49.340 --> 00:17:51.710
now, I would think things were
getting a little stale,

00:17:51.710 --> 00:17:55.550
that in fact, we were bringing in 
a lot of the new ideas...

00:17:55.550 --> 00:17:57.000
- [Josh] Yeah.

00:17:57.000 --> 00:18:01.530
...and that wasn't necessary
immediately appreciated.

00:18:01.530 --> 00:18:02.530
[laughter]

00:18:02.530 --> 00:18:04.300
- [Josh] But that's okay.
- And that's fine.

00:18:04.300 --> 00:18:07.730
We were pushed 
and a lot of great discussions

00:18:07.730 --> 00:18:12.887
in that workshop about 
what should we make of LATE

00:18:12.887 --> 00:18:15.687
but there were other questions
that were just as interesting,

00:18:15.687 --> 00:18:18.267
like the role of 
the propensity score,

00:18:18.267 --> 00:18:20.678
that was a big deal in the 90s

00:18:20.689 --> 00:18:24.300
and econometrics was 
moving towards that

00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:27.550
and there were a lot 
of great questions.

00:18:27.550 --> 00:18:28.790
Yeah,

00:18:29.430 --> 00:18:32.810
I learned a huge amount
there from the time I spent--

00:18:32.810 --> 00:18:34.760
- [Josh] I think the other thing 
that Guido and I

00:18:34.760 --> 00:18:36.800
both benefited from is we both,

00:18:37.400 --> 00:18:39.810
not at the same time, but in
early in our careers,

00:18:39.810 --> 00:18:42.400
taught econometrics 
with Gary Chamberlain,

00:18:43.200 --> 00:18:46.500
and that was like an
apprenticeship for us, I think.

00:18:46.800 --> 00:18:50.530
I taught a mixed graduate,
undergrad 1126,

00:18:50.530 --> 00:18:52.080
I don't know if they still have 
that number...

00:18:52.080 --> 00:18:53.500
- [Isaiah] Mmhmm, they do.

00:18:53.500 --> 00:18:55.480
...very interesting course 
that it had

00:18:55.480 --> 00:18:57.885
both graduate and undergraduate 
enrollment

00:18:58.800 --> 00:19:02.869
and it was relatively applied for 
an econometrics class,

00:19:03.270 --> 00:19:06.542
and I learned a lot by teaching 
that with Gary.

00:19:07.500 --> 00:19:11.618
But in that sense, 
Harvard was a great place,

00:19:11.990 --> 00:19:13.210
very flexible there.

00:19:13.600 --> 00:19:15.879
The other thing I remember 
about Harvard is,

00:19:16.710 --> 00:19:18.612
well I had very good students,

00:19:20.300 --> 00:19:22.672
I taught a lot of 
wonderful students

00:19:22.672 --> 00:19:24.995
who went on to have 
wonderful careers.

00:19:26.300 --> 00:19:28.346
Also, Harvard as an institution,

00:19:28.346 --> 00:19:31.400
you're probably are aware of this, 
Isaiah,

00:19:31.400 --> 00:19:35.350
as a junior faculty member, 
they didn't then ask much of us,

00:19:35.350 --> 00:19:37.140
other than teaching our classes.

00:19:37.640 --> 00:19:40.730
We didn't have administrative concerns,
to speak of.

00:19:41.300 --> 00:19:43.757
I think I went to two 
faculty meetings

00:19:43.757 --> 00:19:45.356
in my two years at Harvard

00:19:46.600 --> 00:19:48.940
and so we're left--

00:19:50.920 --> 00:19:53.400
You were given a lot of freedom 
and flexibility.

00:19:54.740 --> 00:19:58.022
I went to the chair said, 
"Can I teach this course with Rubin?"

00:19:59.620 --> 00:20:04.133
I think it was Friedman
at the time. It was like, "Fine."

00:20:05.200 --> 00:20:09.193
It wasn't really any concern about 
what what it was about

00:20:09.193 --> 00:20:11.790
and again, that was a very 
intimidating experience,

00:20:11.790 --> 00:20:13.350
but it was a great experience.

00:20:13.350 --> 00:20:14.385
♪ [music] ♪

00:20:14.385 --> 00:20:15.620
- [Narrator] If you'd like to 
watch more

00:20:15.620 --> 00:20:17.943
Nobel Conversations, 
click here,

00:20:18.198 --> 00:20:20.516
or if you'd like to learn more 
about econometrics,

00:20:20.516 --> 00:20:23.290
check out Josh's 
"Mastering Econometrics" series.

00:20:23.845 --> 00:20:26.713
If you'd like to learn more about 
Guido, Josh, and Isaiah,

00:20:26.713 --> 00:20:28.514
check out the links 
in the description.

00:20:28.514 --> 00:20:30.347
♪ [music] ♪