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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
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to discuss how the research
was initially received
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and how they responded
to criticism.
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At the time, did you feel like
you are on to something,
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you felt like this was
the beginning of a whole line of work
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that you felt like was going to be important or...?
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Not so much that it was
a whole line of work,
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but certainly I felt like, "Wow, this--"
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We proved something be proved up
that people didn't know before,
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that it was worth knowing.
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Yeah, going back compared to my
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job market papers having--
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I felt this was actually a very clear crisp result.
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But there were definitely
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was mixed reception and I don't
think anybody said that,
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"Oh, wow, this is already,
something."
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No, which is the nightmare scenario for a researcher
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where you think you've discovered
something and then somebody else,
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says, "Oh, I knew that."
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But there were definitely was a need to
convince people that this was worth knowing,
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that instrumental variables estimates
a causal effect for compliers.
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Yeah, but even though it
took a long time to convince
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a bigger audience,
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sometimes even fairly quickly, the
reception was pretty good
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among a small group of people.
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Gary, clearly liked it a lot from the beginning
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and I remember, because at that point Josh had left for Israel,
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but I remember explaining it to Don Ruben
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and he was like, "Yeah, this really is something here."
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Not right away though.
Don took some convincing.
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By the time you got to Don,
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there have been some back
and forth with him
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and in correspondence actually.
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But I remember at some
point getting a call or email from him
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saying that he was sitting at the
airport in Rome
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and looking at the paper and thinking,
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"Yeah, no actually, you guys are onto something."
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We were happy about but that
took longer than I think you remember.
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Yeah, it wasn't right away
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[laughter]
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because I know that I was back in
Israel by the time that happened.
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I'd left for Israel in the summer--
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I was only at Harvard for two years.
We had that one year.
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It is remarkable, I mean, that
one year was so fateful for us.
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- [Guido] Yes.
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I think we understood there was
something good happening,
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but maybe we didn't think it was
life-changing, only in retrospect.
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♪ [music] ♪
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- [Isaiah] As you said, it sounds like a small group
of people were initially quite receptive,
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perhaps took some time for
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a broader group of people to come
around to
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seeing the LATE framework
as a valuable way to look at the world.
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I guess, in over the
course of that, did you
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were their periods
where you thought,
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maybe the people
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saying this wasn't a useful way to
look at the world were right?
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Did you get discouraged?
How did you think about?
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I don't think I was discouraged
but the people who were saying
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that we're smart people, well informed metricians,
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sophisticated readers
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and I think the substance
of the comment was,
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this is not what econometrics is about.
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Econometrics was being transmitted at that time was about structure.
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There was this idea that
there's structure in the economy
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and it's our job to discover it
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and what makes it structure
is it's essentially invariant
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and so we're saying, in the late theorem,
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that every instrument produces
its own causal effect,
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which is in contradiction to that
to some extent
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and so that was where the tension was.
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People didn't want to give up that idea.
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Yeah. I remember
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once people were started
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arguing kind of more more
vocally against that, it
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that never really bothered me
that much. It seems, you know,
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sort of clear that we had
a result there and it was
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Somewhat controversial, but instead
of controversial in a good way. It was
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clear that people felt
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they had to come out
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against it because well,
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I think what we think it's good
now and it's good night wasn't that
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they might not have loved it at. Yeah,
I you know, I remember being somewhat,
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the more upset there was some dinner
with someone said, no, no. That paper
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that paper with Josh. That was really
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that was doing a disservice
to the profession enough.
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We had two reactions like that. So
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That at some level, that's that
may be indicative of the culture
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in general in economics. In the time.
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I thought back later, but
I'd have to happen. Now,
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if I was senior person sitting
in that conversation, I would
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we call that out because it
really was not appropriate,
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but it was so bad.
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I think the criticism is
no, no. No, it wasn't,
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it wasn't completely
misguided to be wrong.
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No. No, but saying if you can
say two papers wrong order.
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Yeah,
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but it's saying that it's a disservice to
the professor. That's not really personal.
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That's yes. And doing that, not to me, but
in front of my senior colleagues, yeah.
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The but nobody was saying the result
was wrong and I remember also,
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some of the comments were, you know,
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thought-provoking so we had some
negative reviews. I think on the
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average causal response paper. Yeah,
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somebody said, you know, these compliers
you can't figure out who they are.
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Right.
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See it's one thing
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to say you're estimating the effect of
treatment on the treated or something
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like that. You can tell me who's treated,
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you know, people in the CPS, you know,
you can't tell me who's a complier.
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So that was a legitimate. That's, that's,
that's only fair that it's because he's
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my dad. Yeah, my that part made people
a little uneasy and uncomfortable.
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Yeah,
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but it's a at the same time
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because it showed that you couldn't
really go beyond that, it was
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Very useful thing to realize
everyone was kind of on the day.
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We got to the key result that I was thinking.
Wow, you know, this is this is sort of
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as good as it gets them here. Be
actually having inside but it clearly
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and we had to sell it. It's about selling
quite a few years. We had to sell. Yeah,
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and it's proven it's
proven to be quite useful.
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I don't think we understood that. It
would be so useful at the time. No,
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I did feel like early on this was
a substantial inside something.
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But yeah, but I did not
think goals were there. Yeah.
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I felt like we were aiming for the Nobel.
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We were very happy to get
that noted econometrics.
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These are factors are ways of approaching
problems that lead people to be better at
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like
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recognizing the good stuff and taking the
time to do it as opposed to dismissing it.
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Sometimes I think it's helpful.
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If you're trying to convince somebody
that you have something useful to say
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and maybe they don't, you
know, speak your language.
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You might need to learn their language.
Yes. Yes. That's what we did with Don we cuz
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we figured out.
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How to remember.
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We had a very hard time explaining
the exclusion restriction to Dawn May.
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Rightfully, so it probably
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I think he do and I eventually figured out
that it wasn't formulated very clearly,
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you know,
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and we came up with a way to do that in
the potential outcomes framework that
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I think kind of worked
for the three of us. Yeah.
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Well, I've worked for
the bigger literature but
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I think what you're saying that is exactly
right. You kind of need to figure out
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how not just kind of say, okay. Well,
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I've got this language
and this this works great
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and I've got to convince someone
else to use the language.
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You could first figure out what language
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State using and then
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only then, can you try to say?
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Wow, but here you thinking of it this way,
but that's actually a pretty hard thing
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to do. You get someone from a
different discipline, convincing them.
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They kind of to Junior faculty in a
different department actually have something
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to say to you. That's that
takes a fair amount of effort.
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Yeah, I wrote I wrote
on a number of times.
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Yeah,
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it fairly long letters. And I remember
thinking this is worth doing, you know,
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that if I could convince
Don that would sort of,
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The framework to some extent.
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I think both both you and Dom were a little
bit more confident that you were right.
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We used to argue a lot and
you would sometimes refereed.
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That was fun.
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I remember it wasn't. It wasn't hurtful.
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I remember getting a little testy.
Once we had lunch in The Faculty Club
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and we're talking, we're talking
about the draft lottery paper. Yeah,
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talking about never take his kind of
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people wouldn't serve in
the military irrespective of
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whether they were getting drafted.
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And you are done said something
about shooting yourself in the foot,
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as a way of getting out of the military
and that may be the exclusion restriction
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for never takes Muslim working.
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And then wherever they were ever
said that the animal is going well.
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Yes, you could do that. But why would
you want to shoot yourself in the foot?
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It is Khalil. The I usually go for
moving to Canada from. Yeah. That's it.
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Lindsey Graham teacher,
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yes, but he thinks a tricky mean it's the,
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you know, I say I get students coming
from computer science and they want to do
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things on causal, inference.
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And it takes a huge amount of
effort to kind of do figure out how
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they actually thinking about problem
better. This, there's something there.
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And so, now over the years,
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I've got a little more
appreciation for the fact that Don
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was actually willing to kind of.
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Yeah, it took a while, but he did
engage kind of first with Josh.
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And then we both of us.
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And rather than kind of dismissing
the say, okay. Well, you know,
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I can't figure out what these guys are
doing and it's probably just not really that
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that interesting
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everybody always wants to
figure out quickly, you know,
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you want to save time and you want to save
your brain cells for other things. So,
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you know,
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the fastest route to that is to figure
out why you should dismiss something. Yes.
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Yes. I don't need to spend time on this.
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If you'd like to watch more
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If you'd like to learn more
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00:10:24.900 --> 00:10:26.400
check out the links in the description.