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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.
If you'd like to watch more Nobel conversations, click here,
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check out the links in the description.