S1E26: Interview with Peter Arcidiacano, Duke professor, labor economist
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Show Notes
I first met Peter Arcidiacano, professor of economics at Duke University, while I was a PhD student at the University of Georgia and I have followed his work since from a distance. I originally followed Peters work because he’d written several articles about sex from a two-sided matching perspective. I was struck by the fact that we both saw thinking about sexual relationships in terms of a matching problem. Two sided matching perspectives focus on the assignment mechanisms that bring people together, and when it comes to sexual relationships, the relative supply of possible partners and competition for those partners will in equilibrium result in pairings, some of which may become the most life sustaining and defining partnerships of those peoples lives. Peter’s work was gratifying to read, and I have often looked up to him for his successful merging of theory and econometrics to study topics I cared about.
The economic way of thinking is not about topics, nor is it is not about data, even though economists tend to have particular topics they study intensely and use data usually to do so. The economic way of thinking does though typically involve careful study of allocation mechanisms, such as prices and markets, that bring the productive capacity of communities into existence. These things are important as they animate humans to work together, produce output that manages the production itself, and increasingly towards the end of history, left surplus for humans to enjoy. Who ends up in what activities doing what types of specialized work ultimately shapes that which is made, how much and how it is distributed. The allocations end up not only shaping our lives, but our children’s lives. Starting conditions can cast a long shadow lasting centuries even causing certain groups to creep ahead as more and more of the surplus mounts and accrues to them, while others watch as a shrinking part of the growing pie flows to them.
In the United States, in the 21st century, one of the key institutions in all of this assignment of love and commerce has been the university. And within the university system, there are gradations of institutional pedigree and at the top of the pack sits elite institutions whose students seem practically destined to shape and receive the surplus. Given the path dependence in wealth, and how it has interacted with race, it is therefore no wonder that policymakers and economists have for decades sought to refine the rules by which schools can select high school applicants for admission. In many ways, our country’s fight over the use of race in selecting students into college is the old debates about capitalism and the self adjusting market system writ large.
So it’s in this broader context about work, schools, matching and allocation mechanisms that I think of Peter and his scholarship. When I review the range of topics on Peters vita, I see the signature marks of the modern 21st century labor economist. Someone interested in markets and how they work to connect people into productive cooperation. Someone interested in institutions, someone concerned about inequality and discrimination, someone versed both in economic theory and econometrics, someone at home with a bewildering array of numbers in a spreadsheet. To me, it is natural that Peter has pivoted so fluidly between topics like sex, work, discrimination and higher education because in my mind these are all interconnected topics concerning the assignment mechanisms we use in America to organize society and maintain our collective standard of living.
I invited Peter on the Mixtape with Scott as part of an ongoing series I call “economists and public policy”. The series focuses on how economics and economists think about and attempt to shape public policy. It includes people with a variety of perspectives, and even some who are critics of economics itself. Previous guests on the podcast in the “economists and public policy” series have been Sandy Darity, Elizabeth Popp Berman, Anna Stansbury, Mark Anderson, Alan Manning, Larry Katz, Jeremy West and Jonathan Meer.
Peter has not only produced academic articles in some of economics’ most impactful outlets — he has recently served as expert witness in two major discrimination cases, one of which put him on the opposite side of the stand as David Card, winner of 2021 Nobel Prize in economics. You can read about the cases here. They involve the broader topic of race and affirmative action at universities. The cases more specifically involve whether Harvard and UNC Chapel Hill admissions criteria show signs of discrimination.
One of the things about Peter’s involvement as expert witness that I want to highlight, though, is that his expert testimony was, at its core, an example of the role that econometrics can play in the shaping of public policy. It is more and more the case that economics’ role in the shaping of public policy in the 21st century will involve not merely economic theory, but also statistical analysis of complex datasets too, and I think it is worth pausing and noting that the economist shapes public policy oftentimes these days as much through interpreting data as her counterpart did using pure economic theory. I hope you find this discussion with Peter thought provoking and informative about both his work on these cases, but also about the role of economics and econometrics in forming public policy. But I also hope that the interview will give you a deeper insight into Peter and who he is.
Scott’s Substack as well as The Mixtape with Scott are supported by user subscriptions. Please share this episode to people within and outside economics that you think might be interested. I love doing these interviews and using the substack to do deeper dives into econometrics and the lives of economists and if you find this work valuable, please consider subscribing and supporting it.
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Transcript
Scott Cunningham:
In this week's episode of Mixtape: the Podcast, I had the pleasure of talking with a professor at Duke University, named Peter Arcidiacono. I can never pronounce it correctly, no matter how many times I try. I first met Peter in graduate school. He was, probably then, an assistant professor at Duke, where he has spent his entire career. I was a PhD student at the University of Georgia. And he had a research paper on a topic that I was also working on, involving marriage markets. He's been an incredibly prolific producer in the area of labor economics and education, as well as affirmative action. And he uses tools in econometrics, that I largely never invested in, structural econometrics and discrete choice modeling. So when I read his work, I usually do it, both, because I'm interested in the paper and the paper topic, but also because I'm hoping that this will be a chance for me to open my mind a little bit more, and pick up on some of that econometric modeling, that I lack.
Peter is also an expert witness in a high profile case, right now, involving affirmative action and racial discrimination at Harvard University, and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, both of which have been combined into a single case. As I understand it, it's going for the Supreme court soon. In this interview, we walk through a lot of big and small issues around society's preferences around poverty, inequality, as well as the role that higher education is playing in both. My name is Scott Cunningham, and this is Mixtape: the Podcast.
Scott Cunningham:
Okay. This is great. I don't know if you remember. So this is an interview with professor of economics at Duke University, Peter Arcidiacono. And we're going to be talking about a range of topics. But just to give the reader and the listener a little bit of background, Peter, could you tell me a little bit about yourself, and what your involvement is with a current case, going before the Supreme court, involving University of North Carolina and Harvard University?
Peter Arcidiacono:
Certainly. And thanks for having me on. I've been at Duke now, for over 20 years. This was my first job out of grad school, and stayed here ever since. And a lot of my work has been on higher education, both with regard to choice of college major, as well as affirmative action.
And one of the really dissatisfying things about working on affirmative action, is that universities hide their data. So you can't really get a good sense of how the programs are working, because you typically don't have the data. And I think that that really matters, because to me, so much of the discussion about affirmative action, is in the binary. Either we have it, or we don't have it. But what it means to have it, is something, as economists, we would think about, that's something we would be optimizing over. And so, there's really a large space between race as a tiebreaker in admissions, and what somebody like Abraham Kennedy would advocate for, which would be more of a quota system.
And so, thinking about where you stand on that, to me, I had this opportunity to work on these two cases, two lawsuits. One brought against Harvard, and one against UNC, on the role of race in these admissions processes. And for me, it was an opportunity to look behind the veil, and see how these programs actually operated.
My intent was always to, a feeling as though, if I'm going to be an expert on affirmative action, I should know how these processes actually work. So my intent was always to use this for the purposes of research, as well. And we've written a number of papers out of the Harvard case. Four have been accepted now, and we just released a fifth one on racial preferences of both schools. And we'll see what happens with that. So those lawsuits, I testified in trial, at both those cases. My counterpart in the Harvard case was David Card, who recently won the Nobel Prize. I was wondering how I would respond to that. And actually, my response, I got to go up against a Nobel Prize winner.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah. Right. Right.
Peter Arcidiacono:
So those experiences were somewhat traumatizing. But both experts, David Card and Kevin Hoxby, are pillars in the field, and people who have been very helpful to me, and who I have a great deal of respect for.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah. Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
So these cases have now, in both those cases, the side I was on lost at the first round. In the Harvard case, they also lost at the appellate round.
Peter Arcidiacono:
In UNC, it didn't actually go through the appellate round, because-
Scott Cunningham:
Oh, so-
Peter Arcidiacono:
... supreme court merged the cases.
Scott Cunningham:
... Both the Harvard University case and the Chapel Hill case, were already decided, but not at the Supreme Court level.
Peter Arcidiacono:
That's right.
Scott Cunningham:
Okay.
Peter Arcidiacono:
So the decision was appealed. It's now before the Supreme Court.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
I think the Supreme Court scheduled here, arguments in October, and then, we'll see when they release a decision.
Scott Cunningham:
Okay. So, and these are both cases involving affirmative action and racial discrimination amongst particular groups of people? Is that groups of students, is that right?
Peter Arcidiacono:
That's right. Though, in the UNC case, there's actually no claim of Asian American discrimination. So that actually, you only see that at Harvard. You don't see that at UNC. That doesn't mean, I think that Asian discrimination is unique to Harvard.
Scott Cunningham:
Right.
Peter Arcidiacono:
I think it has to do with the fact of there not being that many Asian Americans in North Carolina.
Scott Cunningham:
North Carolina, right.
Peter Arcidiacono:
It's always been a bigger issue at the very top schools.
Scott Cunningham:
And you were called in, as an expert witness, for the plaintiff in both of those cases.
Peter Arcidiacono:
That's right.
Scott Cunningham:
Right. So David Card is the expert witness for Harvard, representing Harvard, against an accusation of, well, what exactly is the accusation against both of these institutions, and who brought these accusations against them?
Peter Arcidiacono:
So the group is called Students for Fair Admissions. And they basically got groups of students to, as their plaintiffs. Though, it's not about those particular students, in terms of remedies. And in Harvard, there's three claims. One, whether or not they're discriminating against Asian American applicants, relative to white applicants.
Scott Cunningham:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
Two, whether the size of the preferences given for underrepresented groups, is constitutional.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And three, whether there were race-neutral alternatives that they could have used. So the Supreme Court has said, "If there is a race-neutral alternative, you should use that."
Scott Cunningham:
Okay.
Peter Arcidiacono:
I'm not really involved at the race-neutral part. We had a different expert for that aspect.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
Though, in both cases, Card and Hoxby actually did the race-neutral part, as well.
Scott Cunningham:
What exactly does the constitution say a admissions committee can use, when drawing up a student cohort?
Peter Arcidiacono:
Well, so I'm not sure what the constitution has to say on it, but I can say what the history of this of the court challenges have been.
Scott Cunningham:
Okay.
Peter Arcidiacono:
So I think, it's Title VI of Civil Rights Act said, "You're not supposed to use race-"
Scott Cunningham:
Race.
Peter Arcidiacono:
"... in these types of things." And there are other categories too.
Scott Cunningham:
Okay.
Peter Arcidiacono:
But race is the focus of this one. Now, the reason they had that, was because of the history of ill treatment of African Americans.
Scott Cunningham:
Right.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And this is obviously going in the other direction-
Scott Cunningham:
Mm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
... with regard to African Americans receiving preferences in the admissions process.
Scott Cunningham:
Mm. Mm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
So, but then, the history was that the original decision, the Bakke case, said, "Look, you can't use race in admissions, because of reparations. You can only use it because of the benefits of diversity." So the state can have an interest in diversity. And that was a compromised position to get that swing justice, to sign onto it.
Scott Cunningham:
Mm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
Since then, there have been a number of cases. I think the ones that are most relevant right now, are the ones that came out of the Michigan cases.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And there was one at the undergraduate level, which they found that you could not use race as part of an explicit point system.
Scott Cunningham:
Mm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
So you can get points for having a good SAT score, points for being a particular race, you add them up together, then you could rank the-
Scott Cunningham:
I see.
Peter Arcidiacono:
... applicant.
Scott Cunningham:
So there were schools that were doing a point system based on individual characteristics, like race. And that was, at that moment, it was unclear whether that would be legal. It was, I guess, or was it something that schools were, potentially, in a legal, bad situation, when they were using it? Or was it just not known?
Peter Arcidiacono:
I don't think it was clear. And that's where the court ruled. You cannot use it in that way.
Scott Cunningham:
Got it. Okay.
Peter Arcidiacono:
At the same time, there was a case against Harvard's Law School. And on that one, they said that you could use race, holistically. As an economist, I can express anything as a formula. And then, the question is, whether you see all parts of the formula or not.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
So it gets a little tricky. And I think that, from my perspective, I would've rather had the ruling go in the exact opposite way.
[inaudible 00:11:59] on if we're going to find in favor of one or the other.
I would prefer a point system to a holistic one, because then, everything's clear.
Scott Cunningham:
Clear. Yeah. It seemed really precise-
Peter Arcidiacono:
[inaudible 00:12:09], to hide their data.
Scott Cunningham:
... Yeah. It seems like lots of times with the law, the imprecision of this language, as though it's a solution to the problem, is really challenging for designing policy.
Peter Arcidiacono:
I totally agree. Yeah.
Scott Cunningham:
So, okay. I want to set up the reader a little bit, oh, the listener, to know who you are before we dive into this, because I'm loving this thread, but I want people to know who you are. So before we get more into the case, can you tell me where you grew up, and why you got into economics? Your first, what was the touchstone that brought you into this field?
Peter Arcidiacono:
So I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. My first set of years were actually in Ellensburg, Washington, which is a town of 13,000. My dad was a math education professor.
Scott Cunningham:
Oh, okay. What university was he a professor at?
Peter Arcidiacono:
Central Washington University.
Scott Cunningham:
Okay. Okay.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And then-
Scott Cunningham:
Hey, but what'd you say it was? What was it again?
Peter Arcidiacono:
... It was math education.
Scott Cunningham:
Math education.
Peter Arcidiacono:
Yeah. So he was teaching teachers how to teach math.
Scott Cunningham:
Oh. So you've always been, it's in the family to be interested in education?
Peter Arcidiacono:
Yes. And-
Scott Cunningham:
And even this math education part. That's another way of describing an economist that studies education.
Peter Arcidiacono:
... Right.
Scott Cunningham:
Math education.
Peter Arcidiacono:
Well, my parents actually met in linear algebra class, so.
Scott Cunningham:
Oh, that's romantic.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And I've got two brothers, and they were both math majors.
Scott Cunningham:
Oh, wow. Okay.
Peter Arcidiacono:
I was the only non-math major.
Scott Cunningham:
Okay. Okay.
Peter Arcidiacono:
But I came into college, and started out in chemistry. I think, Econ PhD programs are filled with former, hard science majors.
Scott Cunningham:
No joke. Yeah, yeah. They hit organic chemistry, and then, they changed their major.
Peter Arcidiacono:
Right. And I just couldn't stand the lab. It was too social. And one of my good friends, a guy who ended up being the best man at my wedding, was a couple years ahead of me, told me I should take an economics class.
Scott Cunningham:
Mm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And it was amazing. I think that just the way of thinking, just worked naturally for me.
Scott Cunningham:
Well, so when you say way of thinking, the way of thinking that was, can you tell me what your 19 year old self would've been jarred by? What are the specific things, that economic way of thinking, that he was noticing?
Peter Arcidiacono:
Well, it just fit with a lot of how I operated. So I view economics as a great model of fallen man.
Scott Cunningham:
Uh-huh.
Peter Arcidiacono:
Fundamentally, I was the guy who always looked for the loopholes. So responding really well to incentives. I had a keen eye for how I could game the system.
Scott Cunningham:
Right. Right.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And so, I think a lot about what economics is doing, is the dismal science, right? The reigns on the parade of well-intentioned policies.
Scott Cunningham:
Right. Right.
Peter Arcidiacono:
How are people going to get around the policies? Well, that's where I lived, was figuring out how I could game the system.
Scott Cunningham:
Right. Right. Right. So you were, this idea of that rational choice paradigm, is that what you mean?
Peter Arcidiacono:
Yeah.
Scott Cunningham:
And that-
Peter Arcidiacono:
Yeah.
Scott Cunningham:
... that people would just simply, if they have goals, those goals don't just go away with a policy. They might just continue to try to achieve those goals at lowest cost, even then.
Peter Arcidiacono:
Exactly.
Scott Cunningham:
Right. Right.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And the other studying thing, which I think, really affected why I ended up doing the research that I did, was, for me, the chemistry classes were just way harder-
Scott Cunningham:
Uh-huh.
Peter Arcidiacono:
... than economics classes.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And I'm not trying to say that any classes are easy.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
But there is definitely large differences-
Scott Cunningham:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
... in every university, and what the expectations are-
Scott Cunningham:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
... across fields.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And that distorts people's behavior.
Scott Cunningham:
Mm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
So I view it, that most colleges are subsidizing students, to go into low paying fields. And how do they subsidize them to do that? They offer higher grades-
Scott Cunningham:
Mm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
... and lower workloads, smaller class sizes. All those things work, so that lots of people come in wanting to major in well-paying fields, and switch in, and switch out.
Scott Cunningham:
Right. Right. Right.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And they do so because of the incentives the universities provide.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah. So you got interested in economics, and that's like, you're describing some sort of price theory, microeconomics. But you've also have made a career out of being such a strong econometrician in this area of structural econometrics and discrete choice modeling. How did you get interested in those topics? What was your first reaction to econometrics?
Peter Arcidiacono:
I had a very strange econometrics background. So my first year econometrics, was taught by Chuck Manski.
Scott Cunningham:
Oh.
Peter Arcidiacono:
The whole year. And so, it was lots of bounds.
Scott Cunningham:
Uh-huh.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And then, my second year, it was all John Rust.
Scott Cunningham:
Mm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
So a complete swing, right? So you go from the non-parametrics, what can you identify under the smallest number of assumptions?
Scott Cunningham:
Mm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
To what can you identify, if you want an answer something really big.
Scott Cunningham:
Right.
Peter Arcidiacono:
You got to make a lot of assumptions to make that.
Scott Cunningham:
Oh, boy. That's an interesting journey, right there.
Peter Arcidiacono:
So I actually never had the mostly harmless econometric-
Scott Cunningham:
Right. Right.
Peter Arcidiacono:
... at all.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And the econometrics has always been-
Scott Cunningham:
This was Wisconsin?
Peter Arcidiacono:
... That's right.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
That's right.
Scott Cunningham:
What year was this?
Peter Arcidiacono:
In the econometrics, the advances were always more, because I needed to do something to estimate my models.
Scott Cunningham:
Right. This was mid nineties? This would've been the mid nineties, or late nineties?
Peter Arcidiacono:
I'd like to say late nineties. Yeah-
Scott Cunningham:
Late nineties? Okay. Yeah-
Peter Arcidiacono:
... [inaudible 00:19:10].
Scott Cunningham:
... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, keep going. Sorry.
Peter Arcidiacono:
So I was thinking about my own experience, in terms of choosing a college major, and thinking about, Well, people are learning over time. They start out those STEM classes, and figured out, wow, this is a little bit harder than I expected.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah. Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And then, moved through.
Scott Cunningham:
Right.
Peter Arcidiacono:
So I had a mind, I actually had the idea for my job market paper, my first year. And had this idea of a forward looking model, of how people choose their college major.
Scott Cunningham:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And so, then, I go into John Rust's office, because he's my second year econometrics professor, and was describing this problem to him, that people are making decisions today, giving expectations about the future.
Scott Cunningham:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And he says, "Yeah, I think I can help you with that." And I was like, "No, you don't understand. This is a really hard problem." And of course, John Rust had written the [inaudible 00:20:13] paper about how to estimate these types of models-
Scott Cunningham:
Right.
Peter Arcidiacono:
... And he was fantastic with me. [inaudible 00:20:20]. He didn't say idiot. You could at least look at what I do, before you come to my office. He was fantastic with me.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah. Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And actually, the funny story about that too, is he's actually the only reason I'm an economics professor, because-
Scott Cunningham:
Oh, yeah?
Peter Arcidiacono:
... I only got into one grad school. Got rejected from much worse places in Wisconsin. It was the only place that accepted me.
Scott Cunningham:
Mm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And the joke was that that was the year John rusted everybody in. So there were 53 of us to [inaudible 00:20:57].
Scott Cunningham:
That's awesome.
Peter Arcidiacono:
17 got PhDs.
Scott Cunningham:
Wow.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And if you look at another guy, one of my friends, I just actually found out we were actually at a conference in honor of John Rust, this past weekend.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And it turns out, that was the only place that admitted him, as well. And he's been incredibly successful too.
Scott Cunningham:
The John Rust fixed effect is filled with stories.
Peter Arcidiacono:
That's right.
Scott Cunningham:
That's really cool. That's really cool. I'm curious, thinking about what your, I want get to the Harvard and the Chapel Hill. But before we move on, you could imagine, had you gone to Princeton, or MIT, and worked with, or Berkeley, and worked with these, the treatment effects guys, like Imbens, and Angrist, and Card, and Kruger, and O'Reilly, and all these people. It's not just that your knowledge of econometrics would've been slightly different. Even the kinds of questions, that you would be asking, might be different. So I'm curious, what do you think your training and structural, under Manski and Rust, how has that shaped, not just the way you do your work, but even the types of questions that you ask, that you imagine, you might not have asked? For instance, just even thinking, modeling choice-
Peter Arcidiacono:
[Inaudible 00:22:40].
Scott Cunningham:
I'm sorry. I don't know. Did I lose you?
Peter Arcidiacono:
You froze on me.
Scott Cunningham:
Ah, I froze? Okay-
Peter Arcidiacono:
You're still frozen.
Scott Cunningham:
... I'm still frozen? Okay. There. Okay.
Peter Arcidiacono:
Now, you're back. So you're asking about what types of questions.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah. What kinds of questions do you think you ended up being really interested in, and working on? Not just the model that you wrote down, but even the actual topics. Because I'm curious, I'm wondering if listeners could really frame their understanding of this structural, versus this causal inference, tradition. Not just in terms of the technical pieces, but like this is practically how, the work a person ends up, that you think you ended up doing, versus if you had got Angrist as an advisor.
Peter Arcidiacono:
Oh, I think it has shaped me quite a bit. I am certain that if I'd gone to a place like Chicago, I would've probably ended up working with Steve Levitt. I am naturally attracted to some of those topics, that are more of a freakaconomics-type nature. And if you look at it, we actually had competing papers-
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
... on discrimination in the Weakest Link game show.
Scott Cunningham:
Uh-huh. Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And I've written a couple of sports papers. So I have that in me, to think about those types of things. If I'm-
Scott Cunningham:
Topics, right? Right.
Peter Arcidiacono:
... Yeah.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
I think that the Manski Rust combination did have a big effect on me, and, in the types of questions that I asked. Which is what structural brings to the table, is thinking about mechanisms.
Scott Cunningham:
Mm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
So when you think about the effect of affirmative action on outcomes, understanding why the effect is what it is, matters.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
How it affects application behaviors. How is affects what majors issues. What would be those counterfactuals? And for that, I think you need some of these structural approaches.
Scott Cunningham:
Right.
Peter Arcidiacono:
Now, one of the things about those structural approaches, to say, typically involve making some pretty big assumptions.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And I think that that's where the Manski influences had on me, because I also have papers that use subjective expectations data. And I think that that is actually an incredibly promising area of work.
Scott Cunningham:
Mm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
It's quite clear that people don't know as much as they should know, when they make important decisions. Certainly, higher education being a prime example of that.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
COVID really makes that clear, you know? How can it be that the people who are unvaccinated, are least likely to wear a mask? Clearly, they're operating under very different beliefs about-
Scott Cunningham:
Right.
Peter Arcidiacono:
... what's going to happen.
Scott Cunningham:
Right. Right. Right. Right. Okay. So let's move into this Harvard Chapel Hill project. So setting it up, tell me, what is the first event that happens, that makes this a case against Harvard? Not counting alleged discrimination, but the actual historical event, that leads to a need for an expert witness.
Peter Arcidiacono:
Well, I think the need for the expert witness came about, because Harvard had to release their data, in the context of the trial.
Scott Cunningham:
Mm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
So in the context of the lawsuit, the claim was there were some smoking guns that suggested the possibility, for example, of Asian American discrimination
Scott Cunningham:
That would not fit this holistic criteria, that you mentioned earlier?
Peter Arcidiacono:
Well, so, it's an interesting question, right? So you can't have with the holistic criteria, you can take race into account, but the question is whether you could take race into account, in a way that penalizes a group, relative to white applicants?
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
So it might be one thing to say, "We're going to give a bump for African Americans, relative to whites."
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
Maybe another thing to say, "We're going to give a bump for whites, relative to Asian Americans."
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Okay. So they've had a lawsuit brought against Harvard. Harvard's had a lawsuit filed against them. What year is-
Peter Arcidiacono:
[inaudible 00:27:32]. Sorry, say it again.
Scott Cunningham:
What year would that have been?
Peter Arcidiacono:
Oh, man. I think it was back in 2015, or something like that.
Scott Cunningham:
2015. Did anybody see that coming? Or was this odd, this is just inevitable?
Peter Arcidiacono:
I think that, they were advertising for plaintiffs, students who had been rejected. So certainly, there was an intent to file such a lawsuit, for sure. And then, they had to weigh what universities to file it against. And they chose Harvard, because of the patterns on what were going on with Asian Americans. And I think UNC had more to do with the, there was some evidence in the record, from past cases, that race-neutral alternatives would work there.
Scott Cunningham:
Mm-hmm. Okay. So you get involved. How do you get selected as the expert witness? And what's your job, exactly, in all this?
Peter Arcidiacono:
So I think I get selected, I've written a couple of survey articles on affirmative action. And I view it that there are lots of nuances. So the fact that I would actually say there are nuances, as opposed to it being always good-
Scott Cunningham:
Right.
Peter Arcidiacono:
... made it attractive for them, I think.
Scott Cunningham:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And back in 2011, there was actually a protest here, at Duke, over one of my studies.
Scott Cunningham:
Oh, really?
Peter Arcidiacono:
Yes. So that one, we were actually using Duke data, and confronting a tough fact, which is lots of black students at Duke came in, wanted to major in STEM and economics, but switched out. In exploring why they were switching out at such a higher rate, relative to white applicants.
Scott Cunningham:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
So for men, it was very extreme.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
8% of white men switched out of STEM and economics-
Scott Cunningham:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
... to a non-STEM, non-economics major. Over 50% of black males switched out. And you look at that, you think, that's a problem.
Scott Cunningham:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And once you account for the differences in academic background, prior to Duke, all those racial gaps go away. And I think what, the path to the protest to serve in the long run. So I won't get into all details of that, but I think that they didn't believe the fact at first.
Scott Cunningham:
And what was the fact exactly, that the racial discrimination, the racial bias, the racial differences vanished, once you conditioned on what, exactly?
Peter Arcidiacono:
I conditioned on academic background.
Scott Cunningham:
Oh, I see. Okay.
Peter Arcidiacono:
Course and such like that. But I think even the original effect, they were surprised by, which was that the switch out rates were so different.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And at that time-
Scott Cunningham:
But why is that a protest against you? What does that have to do with you, if you're just documenting facts?
Peter Arcidiacono:
Well, I think that the negative press headline said, potentially racist study says black students are taking the easy way out. And so-
Scott Cunningham:
Potentially racist study.
Peter Arcidiacono:
Potentially racist study. Yes.
Scott Cunningham:
This study was racist.
Peter Arcidiacono:
That's right. And I think that the issue, it actually makes a lot more sense now, than it did to me at the time. And economists thought this was crazy at the time. It's actually interesting, because I got attacked from people all over the country. It didn't make a major news flash, but within certain circles, it did. And actually, one of the people who wrote about it at the time, was Abraham Kendi. This was before he changed his name. He's not the, he wasn't famous in the same way that he is now. But the fact that I wasn't pointing the finger at the departments, I was pointing the finger, I think it was interpreted as victim blaming. It's their fault that they're switching out because they're not prepared. That's never how I would want to frame it. I would want, to me, this is, the issue is that you're not prepared-
Scott Cunningham:
You think you framed it?
Peter Arcidiacono:
No, I don't think so. But the way economists talk about things is different.
Scott Cunningham:
I know. I think that something, I think we're, a generous view is that we can't, we don't know what we sound like or something. I get into this a lot with my work on sex work, and I've, I work really hard to try to be very factual. And it, the use of words can be so triggering to a group of people. And I can never, I still can't quite articulate what exactly it is, in hindsight, that I, what word I used that was so wrong. But you feel like you would write that paper differently now?
Peter Arcidiacono:
Knowing that non economists would read it? Yes.
Scott Cunningham:
What would you do differently?
Peter Arcidiacono:
Well, I think, you have to be much more, when I say, it counts for the differences in switching behavior.
Scott Cunningham:
Okay.
Peter Arcidiacono:
The way other people hear that, is I'm able to explain why every single person switches their major, and has nothing to do with other factors. That's the reductionist claim against economists, as opposed to, on average, this is occurring.
Scott Cunningham:
Mm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
So I did a radio interview at the time, and one of the people on the show was a blogger from Racialicious, who was a regular on the show. And-
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
... I didn't really know anything about the show, going in.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And she spent, so she got to go first, and she talked about how problematic my study was. And the way she described it, were ways that I did not think was consistent.
Scott Cunningham:
With what the the study was.
Peter Arcidiacono:
Right. And so, my response to that, really, by grace-
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
... was to say, if I thought that was what the paper was saying, I'd be upset too. And then, was able to pivot into, look, we're actually on the same side on this. We want black students at Duke to succeed in the majors that they're interested in. And to that point, we need to identify the barriers that are affecting that, and what resources we can provide, to make it so that that would not be the case.
Scott Cunningham:
So what are you going to say to your old, let's say you could go back in time, 10 years to that young economist, writing this paper. Without telling him exactly what specifically to say, you can only say a general principle. As you think about writing this, I want you to think about writing it in a different way. What exactly should you be? I guess, what I'm getting at, is how would you pause, what is, what pedagogically should we be communicating to young economists, about language and audience, that we haven't been doing historically, so that we are not unnecessarily tripping people up and creating confusion?
Peter Arcidiacono:
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's really tricky, because on a lot of things, it's just very hard to have a discussion where the emotions are not involved.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah. Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
So when you speak about things related to race, and you talk about things in a very matter of factual way-
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
... that can be heard as you don't care.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
You are not interested in fixing the problem at all. You're just explaining away why we don't need to do anything.
Scott Cunningham:
Right. Right.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And that's how, there's actually this marriage book, I really like, which is, again, I'm going to say this, it's going to come across as stereotyping. This is obviously distributions overlap, but it's called Men Are Like Waffles, Women Are Like Spaghetti. And the ideas is that men compartmentalize everything. So we're talking about this specific issue, not seeing how it relates to the broader picture.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
The advice, the marriage advice I always give now, is don't try to solve your wife's problems. That's always a mistake.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And, but that's effectively, as economists, exactly what we do. We are working in the little waffle box.
Scott Cunningham:
Right.
Peter Arcidiacono:
Focused on this particular problem.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And I don't know how to change that with regard to economics papers. I really try to be very nuanced in my language and such.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah. Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
Maybe in how you motivate the paper, recognizing the racial inequities and the historical discrimination.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
But there is a sense in which it will not be enough.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah. Yeah. There's this, I can't, I just now drew a blank on the, I teach it all. I can see the slide in my deck, but there's a famous computer scientist. And he says, this principal about writing code, and he says, "Be conservative in what you do, and be liberal in what you accept from others." And it's this principle of code writing, which I guess is like, he's basically saying, "When you write code, it needs to be, the noise to signal ratio needs to be very, very low. You need to be very clear in what it's doing, in a very efficient choice to minimize this, these unnecessary errors." But when you're receiving the code, either from your earlier part of the code, or for some other foreign source, you have to change your viewpoint in that sense, because really, the goal, when you're on the receiving end of the code, it seems like your goal is to be this antenna.
Scott Cunningham:
And this antenna is trying to extract information from any meaningful information from the noise. And so, you have to have, as a listener, a certain amount of grace that tolerates that this other person may make mistakes, doesn't say it all right, goes really, really to great lengths to try to, you go to great lengths, to try to figure out exactly what the message is, and what it isn't. And it does seem like, successful communication is a, about a sender who is being clear, and a receiver that is being charitable in what they're going to allow the sender to say, unless the goal is conflict.
Peter Arcidiacono:
That's right.
Scott Cunningham:
If the goal is conflict, then obviously, you don't do that. What you do with conflict, is you find the most bad, then, it's just bad faith. It's just like, trap a person, win the debate. And sometimes, many of us don't realize who we're talking to. We don't know if we're talking to a good faith or a bad faith person. But there's limits, I think, to what an economist or anyone can do, if the person they're talking to really is not interested in connecting.
Peter Arcidiacono:
That's right. And it's interesting, because I think when I either speak publicly, or even giving seminars to economics audiences, the first part is building trust.
Scott Cunningham:
Totally.
Peter Arcidiacono:
We have the same goals.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
We may have different views about how to get there. And I've got some information that may change your mind on this.
Scott Cunningham:
Yeah.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And the issue is whether they can hear the information I say, or if it's going to be ruled out because I'm a bad person.
Scott Cunningham:
Right. Well, let me ask you something. So these tests for, okay, so you correct me where my thinking is wrong. Testing for racial discrimination in admissions. I could imagine econometrics one, I get the data set from Harvard, and I run a regression of admit onto a race dummy.
Peter Arcidiacono:
Right.
Scott Cunningham:
And then, I interpret the statistical significance on the race dummy. And then, I add in more observables. In what sense is this, philosophically, what we are trying to do in the United States, legally, to detect for whatever it is that's violating the constitution. And in what sense is it a big fat failure, that's not what we're trying to do? Can you elaborate that as a multivariate regression-
Peter Arcidiacono:
Yeah. So I think, how to interpret that beginning coefficient, I don't think that coefficient has much of an interpretation, particularly in admissions, because of who applies. And that was, one of the papers that we published on this, is about Harvard's recruiting practices.
Scott Cunningham:
... Mm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
And Harvard, they recruit a lot of people. And particularly, African Americans, who simply have no chance of admission. And so, you could make it. And that could be part of the reason, right, would be, we want to appear as though when you do just that one regression with that one variable-
Scott Cunningham:
Mm.
Peter Arcidiacono:
... through affecting my applicant pool, I can always make it so that coefficient-
Scott Cunningham:
So what happening? So if I've got a u