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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,

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the 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,

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as well as talking to Gary,

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Gary was always encouraging 
of doing that

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and because he done that himself,

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he'd worked with on empirical 
problems with Zvi Griliches

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early in his career.

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Yeah.

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Well, I became more more interested
in the econometric theory

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through our interaction,

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and I think empiricists are often 
impatient with econometric theory,

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partly because empirical work
is very time-consuming,

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and you may have a sense 
that something is

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convincing and sensible

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and you haven't really fully 
made the case for that,

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but you're convinced

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and that motivates you 
to pursue it,

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like the draft lottery story.

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I was pretty sure that was
worth doing

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and I came away from 
working with Guido

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seeing that there was 
the potential to say something

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more than just about 
that particular problem,

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and I think over the those early
years in the 90s,

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our thinking evolved together

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that there's actually 
a framework here,

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a way to solve a lot of problems

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and I think that that is the power
of the LATE framework,

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is it answers a lot of questions.

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♪ [music] ♪

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- [Isaiah] In some sense, 
did you find that,

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email versus facts 
versus in-person,

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the medium mattered
to how collaboration went

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or they're ways that you felt like

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it was the most useful 
to collaborate?

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To me, I think 
what matters most is,

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initially you have a period of--

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We needed that initial period,

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that was very intense with 
almost daily interaction

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and we also became friends.

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You don't develop the kind of 
friendship, electronically usually

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[laughter]

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but once you have that foundation 
you can be pen pals

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and we did use email, 
though it wasn't as useful then

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00:15:25,500 --> 00:15:28,400
but it worked, 
we definitely had a lot of faxes.

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00:15:28,400 --> 00:15:31,300
I still have these faxes, 
long faxes

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and then in the summer, 
I would come to Cambridge,

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00:15:36,885 --> 00:15:40,300
usually to the NBR meetings 
and hang around for a few weeks

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00:15:40,300 --> 00:15:41,949
and you visited me in Israel.

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00:15:41,949 --> 00:15:44,000
I visited in Israel.

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00:15:44,000 --> 00:15:48,400
But yeah, there was good foundation
from that that year

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00:15:49,000 --> 00:15:51,100
and in some sense that was enough.

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Nowadays,

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00:15:53,300 --> 00:15:56,600
I have the co-authors
in lots of different places,

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but it's always been important

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00:15:59,100 --> 00:16:01,380
to spend some time with people 
in the same place,

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00:16:01,380 --> 00:16:04,900
so you understand how they work, 
how they think,

324
00:16:05,800 --> 00:16:07,250
even to the point that,

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00:16:07,250 --> 00:16:08,690
you know when 
they actually respond,

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whether they respond quickly

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00:16:09,813 --> 00:16:10,831
or whether that means

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00:16:10,831 --> 00:16:12,240
they're not actually
doing anything,

329
00:16:12,240 --> 00:16:15,100
or that mean they're thinking hard 
about a problem

330
00:16:15,100 --> 00:16:17,300
and they just take longer,

331
00:16:18,020 --> 00:16:21,707
but you do need to
develop some understanding there.

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♪ [music] ♪

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00:16:23,814 --> 00:16:26,900
- [Isaiah] We've talked about 
how your collaboration started,

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00:16:26,900 --> 00:16:31,000
maybe just to step back slightly,
were they're sort of features about

335
00:16:31,000 --> 00:16:34,000
the environment at Harvard 
or in Cambridge, at the time,

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00:16:34,000 --> 00:16:35,980
which you felt contributed to it?

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00:16:36,290 --> 00:16:37,920
Coming from Brown,

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00:16:37,920 --> 00:16:40,047
I felt it was very 
intimidating place

339
00:16:40,047 --> 00:16:45,200
because it clearly was a very,
very impressive set of people.

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00:16:46,590 --> 00:16:48,620
Zvi Griliches was there, 
Dale Jorgensen--

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00:16:49,350 --> 00:16:53,610
Gary, Jerry Hausman, Whitney Newey,
sometimes Jamie Robins.

342
00:16:53,890 --> 00:16:55,900
I mean, my view of that 
in retrospect,

343
00:16:55,900 --> 00:16:58,000
I can't say I loved every
minute of every talk

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00:16:58,000 --> 00:16:59,270
I ever gave in that Workshop,

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00:16:59,270 --> 00:17:00,990
but that was the highest powered,

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00:17:00,990 --> 00:17:02,670
that was the group 
you wanted to reach

347
00:17:03,600 --> 00:17:07,664
and you would get extraordinarily 
insightful feedback,

348
00:17:07,664 --> 00:17:10,600
even if it wasn't always 
easy to swallow.

349
00:17:11,300 --> 00:17:12,500
Yeah, and I have for a while,

350
00:17:12,500 --> 00:17:15,940
I would basically give 
a talk every semester

351
00:17:15,940 --> 00:17:19,000
because we didn't have 
any money to invite people.

352
00:17:19,710 --> 00:17:22,000
Gary would say, 
"Well, why don't you give a talk?"

353
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[laughter]

354
00:17:26,800 --> 00:17:30,758
That was the arena for young people
with our interest.

355
00:17:30,758 --> 00:17:33,098
- [Guido] Yeah, it was really 
very impressive,

356
00:17:33,098 --> 00:17:35,448
but it was also quite tough--

357
00:17:35,448 --> 00:17:37,128
It was intimidating.

358
00:17:37,800 --> 00:17:41,000
People there had very strong
views on what they thought was

359
00:17:42,810 --> 00:17:44,310
the way you should do econometrics,

360
00:17:44,310 --> 00:17:46,310
the way the direction 
things should go,

361
00:17:49,340 --> 00:17:51,710
now, I would think things were
getting a little stale,

362
00:17:51,710 --> 00:17:55,550
that in fact, we were bringing in 
a lot of the new ideas...

363
00:17:55,550 --> 00:17:57,000
- [Josh] Yeah.

364
00:17:57,000 --> 00:18:01,530
...and that wasn't necessary
immediately appreciated.

365
00:18:01,530 --> 00:18:02,530
[laughter]

366
00:18:02,530 --> 00:18:04,300
- [Josh] But that's okay.
- And that's fine.

367
00:18:04,300 --> 00:18:07,730
We were pushed 
and a lot of great discussions

368
00:18:07,730 --> 00:18:12,887
in that workshop about 
what should we make of LATE

369
00:18:12,887 --> 00:18:15,687
but there were other questions
that were just as interesting,

370
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like the role of 
the propensity score,

371
00:18:18,267 --> 00:18:20,678
that was a big deal in the 90s

372
00:18:20,689 --> 00:18:24,300
and econometrics was 
moving towards that

373
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and there were a lot 
of great questions.

374
00:18:27,550 --> 00:18:28,790
Yeah,

375
00:18:29,430 --> 00:18:32,810
I learned a huge amount
there from the time I spent--

376
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- [Josh] I think the other thing 
that Guido and I

377
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both benefited from is we both,

378
00:18:37,400 --> 00:18:39,810
not at the same time, 
but in early in our careers,

379
00:18:39,810 --> 00:18:42,400
taught econometrics 
with Gary Chamberlain,

380
00:18:43,200 --> 00:18:46,500
and that was like 
an apprenticeship for us, I think.

381
00:18:46,800 --> 00:18:50,350
I taught a mixed graduate,
undergrad 1126,

382
00:18:50,350 --> 00:18:52,210
I don't know if they still have 
that number...

383
00:18:52,210 --> 00:18:53,500
- [Isaiah] Mmhmm, they do.

384
00:18:53,500 --> 00:18:55,480
...very interesting course 
that it had

385
00:18:55,480 --> 00:18:57,885
both graduate 
and undergraduate enrollment

386
00:18:58,800 --> 00:19:02,869
and it was relatively applied 
for an econometrics class,

387
00:19:03,270 --> 00:19:06,542
and I learned a lot by teaching 
that with Gary.

388
00:19:07,500 --> 00:19:11,618
But in that sense, 
Harvard was a great place,

389
00:19:11,990 --> 00:19:13,210
very flexible there.

390
00:19:13,600 --> 00:19:15,879
The other thing I remember 
about Harvard is,

391
00:19:16,710 --> 00:19:18,612
well I had very good students,

392
00:19:20,300 --> 00:19:22,672
I taught a lot of 
wonderful students

393
00:19:22,672 --> 00:19:24,995
who went on to have 
wonderful careers.

394
00:19:26,300 --> 00:19:28,346
Also, Harvard as an institution,

395
00:19:28,346 --> 00:19:31,400
you're probably are aware of this, 
Isaiah,

396
00:19:31,400 --> 00:19:35,350
as a junior faculty member, 
they didn't then ask much of us,

397
00:19:35,350 --> 00:19:37,140
other than teaching our classes.

398
00:19:37,640 --> 00:19:40,730
We didn't have administrative
concerns, to speak of.

399
00:19:41,300 --> 00:19:43,757
I think I went to two
faculty meetings

400
00:19:43,757 --> 00:19:45,356
in my two years at Harvard

401
00:19:46,600 --> 00:19:48,940
and so we're left--

402
00:19:50,920 --> 00:19:53,400
You were given a lot of freedom 
and flexibility.

403
00:19:54,740 --> 00:19:56,011
I went to the chair said,

404
00:19:56,011 --> 00:19:58,022
"Can I teach this course
with Rubin?"

405
00:19:59,620 --> 00:20:04,133
I think it was Friedman
at the time. It was like, "Fine."

406
00:20:05,200 --> 00:20:09,193
It wasn't really any concern about 
what what it was about

407
00:20:09,193 --> 00:20:11,790
and again, that was a very 
intimidating experience,

408
00:20:11,790 --> 00:20:13,350
but it was a great experience.

409
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♪ [music] ♪

410
00:20:14,375 --> 00:20:15,990
- [Narrator] If you'd like to 
watch more

411
00:20:15,990 --> 00:20:18,198
Nobel Conversations, 
click here,

412
00:20:18,198 --> 00:20:20,516
or if you'd like to learn more 
about econometrics,

413
00:20:20,516 --> 00:20:23,290
check out Josh's 
"Mastering Econometrics" series.

414
00:20:23,845 --> 00:20:26,713
If you'd like to learn more about 
Guido, Josh, and Isaiah,

415
00:20:26,713 --> 00:20:28,514
check out the links 
in the description.

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00:20:28,514 --> 00:20:30,347
♪ [music] ♪