Speaker: Joshua Angrist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Title: Intentions are Good but Instrumental Variables is Better: Rescuing Real-World Randomized Trials

Time: 10:00-11:00, July 7, 2025 (Beijing Time, GMT + 8) 

About the speaker

Joshua Angrist is the Ford Professor of Economics at MIT, a co-founder and director of MIT's Blueprint Labs, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Angrist taught at Harvard and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem before coming to MIT in 1996. Angrist received his B.A. from Oberlin College in 1982 and completed his Ph.D. in Economics at Princeton in 1989. 

Angrist and his collaborators develop and study innovative ways to harness the power of natural experiments to answer important economic questions. These new econometric tools help social scientists and policy-makers discover the causal effects of individual choices and government policy changes. 

Angrist received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 2021 (with Co-Laureates Guido Imbens and David Card). He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society, and has served on many editorial boards and as a co-editor of the Journal of Labor Economics.  

In addition to scholarship and teaching, Angrist and Steve Pischke co-authored Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion and Mastering 'Metrics: The Path from Cause to Effect.