On Wednesday, 8 November 2023, Nobel Prize Laureate and Professor at Stanford University Guido Imbens received an honorary doctorate on the recommendation of Erasmus School of Economics. Imbens, who studied at Erasmus School of Economics, was also interviewed by the numerous media such as the Volkskrant (9 November 2023). In the interview by the Volkskrant, Imbens expresses the significance of asking good questions, his latest research interests and the Dutch discussion with regards to foreign students.
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 in 2021 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 until 1983. After that he continued his research career in the United States.
Asking the right questions
According to the Nobel Laureate, academics tend to draft research questions on topics they already know the answer to, such that they can easily impress people with their cleverness. Yet, he notes, it is much better to acknowledge the things one does not know and ask good questions on these topics.
Research on large language models
The Professor’s latest research concerns artificial intelligence, that is, large language models such as ChatGPT and Bard. He remarks that these models are very good at predicting events, trends and behaviour based on historic data and patterns. Still, he sees some drawbacks in these models. These models namely predict based on statistic relationships of the past and are thereby often incorrect in whether these relationships reflect the true causes and effects.
Hence, Imbens argues there is still a lot to gain, especially when it comes to finding creative solutions. He remarks that these models still function as some sort of calculators, and that humans are required to think about how these calculators should be used, which questions should be answered, and especially how these questions should be formulated.
Migration and labour market
In the past, Imbens conducted research on how migration affects the labour market, a highly debated topic for the upcoming Dutch parliamentary elections. The Professor thinks that people often underestimate the contributions of immigrants to the economy of the country to which they migrate. On this note, he regrets the development in the Dutch debate on higher education to offer more Dutch-spoken education instead of English-spoken higher education. He remarks that in the United States large parts of the economy clearly benefits of the increase of foreign students.