Pushing New Ideas (Guido Imbens, Josh Angrist, Isaiah Andrews)

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- [Narrator] Welcome to
Nobel conversations.

In this episode, Josh Angrist
and Guido Imbens,

sit down with Isaiah Andrews

to discuss how the research
was initially received

and how they responded
to criticism.

At the time, did you feel like
you are on to something,

you felt like this was
the beginning of a whole line of work

that you felt like was going to be important or...?

Not so much that it was
a whole line of work,

but certainly I felt like, "Wow, this--"

We proved something be proved up
that people didn't know before,

that it was worth knowing.

Yeah, going back compared to my

job market papers having--

I felt this was actually a very clear crisp result.

But there were definitely

was mixed reception and I don't
think anybody said that,

"Oh, wow, this is already,
something."

No, which is the nightmare scenario for a researcher

where you think you've discovered
something and then somebody else,

says, "Oh, I knew that."

But there were definitely was a need to
convince people that this was worth knowing,

that instrumental variables estimates
a causal effect for compliers.

Yeah, but even though it
took a long time to convince

a bigger audience,

sometimes even fairly quickly, the
reception was pretty good

among a small group of people.

Gary, clearly liked it a lot from the beginning

and I remember, because at that point Josh had left for Israel,

but I remember explaining it to Don Ruben

and he was like, "Yeah, this really is something here."

Not right away though.
Don took some convincing.

By the time you got to Don,

there have been some back
and forth with him

and in correspondence actually.

But I remember at some
point getting a call or email from him

saying that he was sitting at the
airport in Rome

and looking at the paper and thinking,

"Yeah, no actually, you guys are onto something."

We were happy about but that
took longer than I think you remember.

Yeah, it wasn't right away

[laughter]

because I know that I was back in
Israel by the time that happened.

I'd left for Israel in the summer--

I was only at Harvard for two years.
We had that one year.

It is remarkable, I mean, that
one year was so fateful for us.

- [Guido] Yes.

I think we understood there was
something good happening,

but maybe we didn't think it was
life-changing, only in retrospect.

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- [Isaiah] As you said, it sounds like a small group
of people were initially quite receptive,

perhaps took some time for

a broader group of people to come
around to

seeing the LATE framework
as a valuable way to look at the world.

I guess, in over the
course of that, did you

were their periods
where you thought,

maybe the people

saying this wasn't a useful way to
look at the world were right?

Did you get discouraged?
How did you think about?

I don't think I was discouraged
but the people who were saying

that we're smart people, well informed metricians,

sophisticated readers

and I think the substance
of the comment was,

this is not what econometrics is about.

Econometrics was being transmitted at that time was about structure.

There was this idea that
there's structure in the economy

and it's our job to discover it

and what makes it structure
is it's essentially invariant

and so we're saying, in the late theorem,

that every instrument produces
its own causal effect,

which is in contradiction to that
to some extent

and so that was where the tension was.

People didn't want to give up that idea.

Yeah. I remember

once people were started

arguing kind of more more
vocally against that, it

that never really bothered me
that much. It seems, you know,

sort of clear that we had
a result there and it was

Somewhat controversial, but instead
of controversial in a good way. It was

clear that people felt

they had to come out

against it because well,

I think what we think it's good
now and it's good night wasn't that

they might not have loved it at. Yeah,
I you know, I remember being somewhat,

the more upset there was some dinner
with someone said, no, no. That paper

that paper with Josh. That was really

that was doing a disservice
to the profession enough.

We had two reactions like that. So

That at some level, that's that
may be indicative of the culture

in general in economics. In the time.

I thought back later, but
I'd have to happen. Now,

if I was senior person sitting
in that conversation, I would

we call that out because it
really was not appropriate,

but it was so bad.

I think the criticism is
no, no. No, it wasn't,

it wasn't completely
misguided to be wrong.

No. No, but saying if you can
say two papers wrong order.

Yeah,

but it's saying that it's a disservice to
the professor. That's not really personal.

That's yes. And doing that, not to me, but
in front of my senior colleagues, yeah.

The but nobody was saying the result
was wrong and I remember also,

some of the comments were, you know,

thought-provoking so we had some
negative reviews. I think on the

average causal response paper. Yeah,

somebody said, you know, these compliers
you can't figure out who they are.

Right.

See it's one thing

to say you're estimating the effect of
treatment on the treated or something

like that. You can tell me who's treated,

you know, people in the CPS, you know,
you can't tell me who's a complier.

So that was a legitimate. That's, that's,
that's only fair that it's because he's

my dad. Yeah, my that part made people
a little uneasy and uncomfortable.

Yeah,

but it's a at the same time

because it showed that you couldn't
really go beyond that, it was

Very useful thing to realize
everyone was kind of on the day.

We got to the key result that I was thinking.
Wow, you know, this is this is sort of

as good as it gets them here. Be
actually having inside but it clearly

and we had to sell it. It's about selling
quite a few years. We had to sell. Yeah,

and it's proven it's
proven to be quite useful.

I don't think we understood that. It
would be so useful at the time. No,

I did feel like early on this was
a substantial inside something.

But yeah, but I did not
think goals were there. Yeah.

I felt like we were aiming for the Nobel.

We were very happy to get
that noted econometrics.

These are factors are ways of approaching
problems that lead people to be better at

like

recognizing the good stuff and taking the
time to do it as opposed to dismissing it.

Sometimes I think it's helpful.

If you're trying to convince somebody
that you have something useful to say

and maybe they don't, you
know, speak your language.

You might need to learn their language.
Yes. Yes. That's what we did with Don we cuz

we figured out.

How to remember.

We had a very hard time explaining
the exclusion restriction to Dawn May.

Rightfully, so it probably

I think he do and I eventually figured out
that it wasn't formulated very clearly,

you know,

and we came up with a way to do that in
the potential outcomes framework that

I think kind of worked
for the three of us. Yeah.

Well, I've worked for
the bigger literature but

I think what you're saying that is exactly
right. You kind of need to figure out

how not just kind of say, okay. Well,

I've got this language
and this this works great

and I've got to convince someone
else to use the language.

You could first figure out what language

State using and then

only then, can you try to say?

Wow, but here you thinking of it this way,
but that's actually a pretty hard thing

to do. You get someone from a
different discipline, convincing them.

They kind of to Junior faculty in a
different department actually have something

to say to you. That's that
takes a fair amount of effort.

Yeah, I wrote I wrote
on a number of times.

Yeah,

it fairly long letters. And I remember
thinking this is worth doing, you know,

that if I could convince
Don that would sort of,

The framework to some extent.

I think both both you and Dom were a little
bit more confident that you were right.

We used to argue a lot and
you would sometimes refereed.

That was fun.

I remember it wasn't. It wasn't hurtful.

I remember getting a little testy.
Once we had lunch in The Faculty Club

and we're talking, we're talking
about the draft lottery paper. Yeah,

talking about never take his kind of

people wouldn't serve in
the military irrespective of

whether they were getting drafted.

And you are done said something
about shooting yourself in the foot,

as a way of getting out of the military
and that may be the exclusion restriction

for never takes Muslim working.

And then wherever they were ever
said that the animal is going well.

Yes, you could do that. But why would
you want to shoot yourself in the foot?

It is Khalil. The I usually go for
moving to Canada from. Yeah. That's it.

Lindsey Graham teacher,

yes, but he thinks a tricky mean it's the,

you know, I say I get students coming
from computer science and they want to do

things on causal, inference.

And it takes a huge amount of
effort to kind of do figure out how

they actually thinking about problem
better. This, there's something there.

And so, now over the years,

I've got a little more
appreciation for the fact that Don

was actually willing to kind of.

Yeah, it took a while, but he did
engage kind of first with Josh.

And then we both of us.

And rather than kind of dismissing
the say, okay. Well, you know,

I can't figure out what these guys are
doing and it's probably just not really that

that interesting

everybody always wants to
figure out quickly, you know,

you want to save time and you want to save
your brain cells for other things. So,

you know,

the fastest route to that is to figure
out why you should dismiss something. Yes.

Yes. I don't need to spend time on this.

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