Former student and Nobel Prize winner Guido Imbens interviewed in NRC Business Journal

Guido Imbens visits Erasmus School of Economics

Guido Imbens regularly visits his alma mater. Such was the case on June 30, 2022. During that day he gave an inspirational lecture wherein he discussed the importance of asking the right question and how to study causal effects in real world data sets. You can rewatch the lecture below!

Nobel Prize laureate

Dutch American Guido Imbens, Professor of Economics and Professor of Applied Econometrics at the prestigious Stanford Graduate School of Business, was awarded the Nobel Prize along with his colleague Joshua Angrist for their research in the mid-1990s into the possibility of so-called natural experiments to explain causal connections. The title of their award-winning research is 'methodological contribution to analysis of causal relationships'.

Guido Imbens is an alumnus of Erasmus School of Economics. He studied Econometrics in Rotterdam from which he graduated in 1983. After that he continued his research career in the United States.

About the lecture

In his lecture, Professor Imbens began with a short history of econometrics. Where he talked about the gradual move from randomized control trials towards leveraging sophisticated methods to identify causal effects from observational data. He continued with discussing some famous examples of econometricians identifying causal relationships in observational data. After his insightful lecture, Jonah Bol, Commissioner of Internal Affairs for study association AEclipse, interviewed Professor Imbens. They discussed Imbens’ time in Rotterdam and the influence Erasmus School of Economics and Professor Jan Tinbergen (1969 Nobel Prize winner) had on his career. By the end of the interview, the audience had the opportunity to ask their questions to the Nobel Prize laureate.