Hal Varian: commitment

Transcript context

…Has the economics profession moved too far away from models? Some people say there’s been a dearth of new and interesting theories since the mid ’90s. True or false? What’s happened since the mid ’90s is, we’ve seen this great flourishing of empirical work with a lot of the credibility revolution in terms of coming up with better econometric models. I will say, a lot of the work that I’ve done at Google has been in the econometrics area. That was one of my fields as a graduate student. And I’ve published articles in Journal of Econometrics over time, and just getting that — being able to develop coherent statistical reporting within an organization is critically important. And you’ve published in your academic career some articles that — at least to some people — would count as, I wouldn’t say obscure, but highly theoretical. You have a 1982 econometric piece, “The Nonparametric Approach to Demand Analysis.” Did doing that kind of work also help you at Google?…

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