Why A Leading Economist From Amazon Came to Haus to Democratize Causal Inference

When asked why Haus has so many economists on the team, Haus’ Principal Economist Phil Erickson has a simple answer: “Economists obsess over causality.”

So for a company obsessed with causality, it’s a match made in heaven. Explore our Science page and you’ll find no shortage of economics and econometrics PhDs. 

You’ll also find Phil — a Hausmate since the early days. Before Haus, he earned an econometrics PhD at University of Iowa, then went to Amazon to build productized causal modeling software measuring customer preferences for Amazon Devices. The software was so successful that it was eventually adopted across Amazon, supporting over $1B in annual investments. 

“The whole time I was at Amazon, I kept thinking to myself, ‘Man, it would be so cool if we could do this as its own actual company,’” says Phil. “Then one day I was talking to a couple old friends who’d just left Amazon to join this place called Haus. And that’s when it hit me. I was like ‘Oh, this is it. This is the company.’ At that point, I couldn’t not join.”

Haus and economists: The perfect pair

Phil says that at its heart, Haus is setting out to understand the cause and effect of human decision-making. That isn’t a minor task — in fact, it gets at a question that has baffled scholars for centuries. 

“One of the hardest environments to assess causality is when you’re dealing with people,” says Phil. “Because people are not little lab mice. People aren’t particles. They have their own volition and often make decisions that are contrary to rationality.”

But economists are uniquely well-suited to understand these fickle little humans. After all, they study markets, which — in Phil’s words — are just “systems built on top of human interaction.” By quantifying markets, you can start quantifying human behavior.

“Ultimately, what Haus is doing is attempting to understand how people respond to different types of advertising and different technologies,” says Phil. “So say you’re thinking about your Meta Advantage shopping campaigns — is it causing a change in people’s behavior? To answer that question, you need to bring in some economists.”

Turning expertise into impact

Phil’s seen more and more tech companies — big and small — hire economists to better understand the cause and effect of business decisions. Meanwhile, econometrics PhDs are joining these companies because they get a major benefit: Impact. 

“I love the academic pursuit and the philosophy of building out the human body of knowledge,” says Phil. “But making something that is actually changing businesses? That’s what drew me to Haus.”

That’s why Phil lives for those moments when Haus’ models deliver a measurement insight that leads to a consequential change — some major budget reallocation or strategic adjustment that drives immediate impact for businesses. 

“We often recommend marginal strategic changes,” says Phil. “Maybe a company sees YouTube is more effective than they thought, so they double down. Those moments are nice — but sometimes a company will get enough consistent signals that they’re ready to make a big move relatively quickly. Those big-impact moments are just astonishing.” 

Causal modeling as a product

“Hiring economists to improve business decisions is a relatively new idea,” says Phil. “But even newer is the idea of making a software service out of it. In fact, I’d say Haus is one of the few companies that’s putting causal modeling into a SaaS product and finding product-market fit.”

Phil doesn’t understate how ambitious this task is. And as he and his team take this endeavor to new heights with the development of Causal MMM, he has a message for other economists who have an “unhealthy obsession” with causal modeling software:

“If productizing econometrics and causal modeling and making it openly available to the world is what excites you, there’s no better place to be than Haus,” says Phil. “Period.”