Anita began by asking Andy about his work on replication in sustainable finance, ESG investing, and Corporate Social Responsibility.

Andy explained that his work shows that many of the results in ESG investing – like some other fields in social science – are either corrupted or wrong.    A key problem is that there is a lot of data with no systematic approach conceptually to its analysis.   He called one big problem “forking paths,” which means that, in a complex, large garden, you can see lots of different structural elements from different places on forking pathways.  The antidote to the inconsistencies in your observations?  Try to look at the whole garden comprehensively as a coherent phenomenon.   The problem that we need to overcome is one in our field in which scholars look too many ways at analysis in an effort to get and outcome that they like, and then put that forward for financial and career reasons.   We’re not getting accurate representations of reality.

Andy described how this can be sloppy and unintentional, and is in part a product of our moving super-fast to get to publication.   He talked about how doing this knowingly is lying at some level.    What Andy wants to do these days is to make the findings we publish part of living, dynamic conversations.   Under this model, papers would be accompanied by follow-up comments and replications and complementary modeling.   The goal would be to drive toward accuracy in the academic record.

Anita and Andy reflected on the prevalence of the problems of publishing instrumentally.   For what its worth, Anita confessed to thinking that most people are striving for honest, robust science on a spectrum of behaviors.  Andy sees behavior as less spectral and more on either side of a line that involves knowing instrumentalism.    Agreeing to disagree a bit on this, Anita asked what she could do as an editor to try to get to the kind of quality that Andy wants.

Andy pointed to some specific opportunities, including for publishing comments and replications as noted earlier.  He also explained that making progress is difficult, and that the data we seek is not often available.  That led Anita and Andy into a conversation about the robustness of regulation to drive toward better outcomes.  Andy offered a list of constructive regulatory outcomes, and then made the case for strengthening institutions by citing Tim Synder’s book “On Tyranny,” which he has been reading in the present moment.

The conversation turned toward the challenges of building institutions.

Andy talked about the changes in Elon Musk’s ideas about what constitutes strength in institutions from three years ago to the present moment in which he leads DOGE.   Should we believe in people or in the strength of the rule of law, he challenged?   Anita tends to see institutions as only as effective and constructive as the people within them.   The two again agreed to disagree on this point, and then speculated on what the great economist Elinor Ostrom might say if she were to join the conversation.

Andy gets the final word, and here’s what he said.

Andy’s worried about democracy.  We need to protect the rule of law; our institutions; our regulatory bodies.   Without our core institutions, no progress is possible.  ESG is a fad that will come and go. There will be others.  What we need is hard-core institutional strength.