Scott Cunningham

ben h. williams professor of economics
baylor university

The Orley Genealogy Project

Mapping the intellectual lineage of the credibility revolution in economics

1,147
Economists Tracked
6
Nobel Laureates
4
Generations
50+
Years

About This Project

The credibility revolution transformed empirical economics by emphasizing causal identification through experimental and quasi-experimental methods. This project traces the intellectual lineage from Orley Ashenfelter at Princeton through his students and their descendants, documenting how these methods spread through the profession.

The data comes from multiple sources: hand-collected CV data, the Mathematics Genealogy Project, and crowdsourced contributions. If you're part of this academic family tree, please contribute your information below.

Two Rivers into Causal Inference

The credibility revolution emerged from two intellectual streams converging

Orley Ashenfelter
Princeton Industrial Relations Section
Quasi-Experimental Design
David Card
Princeton/Berkeley
Natural Experiments
Henry Farber
MIT
Lawrence Katz
MIT/Harvard
James Heckman
Chicago
Structural Econometrics
+ Currie, and others
Colleague: Alan Krueger
Don Rubin
Harvard Statistics
Potential Outcomes Framework
Paul Rosenbaum
Propensity Score
The Confluence: Harvard/MIT Economics
Colleague: Claudia Goldin (Nobel 2023, Fogel student)
Joshua Angrist
Orley's student
First cohort (1998-99)
Abadie Duflo
Dynarski Kling
Guido Imbens
Rubin tradition
First cohort (2001-03)
Mortimer Firpo
The Extended Family
668 Gen 2 Students 472+ Gen 3 Students

The Branches

Orley's Direct Students

Princeton IRS advisees
  • David Card (Nobel 2021)
  • Joshua Angrist (Nobel 2021)
  • Henry Farber → MIT → Katz
  • James Heckman (Nobel 2000)
  • Janet Currie

The Farber-Katz Branch

Orley → Farber (MIT) → Katz (Harvard)
  • Lawrence Katz
  • Built Harvard labor program
  • Co-advised with Claudia Goldin
  • Major node for credibility methods

The Rubin Branch

Harvard Statistics → Potential Outcomes
  • Don Rubin — Potential outcomes pioneer
  • Paul Rosenbaum — Propensity score
  • Guido Imbens (Nobel 2021) — Influenced by tradition
  • Merged with Princeton quasi-experimental tradition

Princeton IRS Colleagues

Faculty, not Orley's students
  • Alan Krueger (hired from Harvard)
  • Claudia Goldin (hired from Chicago)

Who's Already in the Database?

Before submitting a new entry, please check if the person is already tracked. Search by name below.

Showing 1025 of 1025 economists
Name Advisor
No matches found. This person may not be in the database yet.

Contribute to the Genealogy

Are you part of this academic family tree? Help us complete the genealogy by submitting an advisor-advisee relationship. All submissions are verified before being added.

Verification Required: Please include a link to a CV or faculty page so we can verify the relationship. Submissions are cross-referenced with Math Genealogy and university records.

The Relationship

Verification

A link where we can verify the advisor-advisee relationship

Methodology

Data Sources: Data was hand-collected from CVs and faculty websites, supplemented by scraping the Mathematics Genealogy Project. The two sources were fuzzy-matched to identify new students and avoid double-counting. Additional data comes from crowdsourced submissions.

Inclusion Criteria: We track primary advisors, co-advisors, and committee members. The hand-collected data includes committee service; Math Genealogy captures only primary advisors.

Known Limitations: Co-advising relationships are undercounted in Math Genealogy. Some recent graduates (2024-2025) may be missing. Non-academic placements are harder to track.

Contact

For questions, corrections, or to report issues with the data, please email Scott_Cunningham@Baylor.edu.

Notes

Nobel Laureates (6): Three Orley students (Heckman 2000, Card 2021, Angrist 2021), one colleague of an Orley student (Imbens 2021, shared prize with Angrist), one colleague (Goldin 2023, Fogel student in cliometrics tradition), and one grandchild (Duflo 2019, Angrist's student).

Living Family Tree: This visualization is a work in progress. The placement of individuals and the structure of branches may change as I learn more about the intellectual connections and receive feedback.