Nobel Prize In Economics Is Shared By Three Economists

Left to right: Canadian David Card, Israeli-American Joshua Angrist and Dutch-American Guido Imbens

The Nobel Prize in Economics for 2021 was given on Monday to three economists who demonstrated that natural experiments (those that occur in real life), which "may be utilized to solve important problems for society."

​​The award will be shared by David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. Card received half of the prize for his research on "the labor market impacts of minimum wages, immigration, and education" at the University of California, Berkeley. The other half of the prize went to Angrist and Dutch-born Imbens for "demonstrating how accurate conclusions regarding cause and effect may be obtained from natural trials."

Card is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and was born in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Angrist is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor. Imbens is a professor at Stanford University in California and was born in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

Card said on Monday that he believed he had been the target of a practical joke. He remarked shortly after receiving the prize, "The message said the call was coming from Sweden." "I know a number of people who would do something like that."

"Most old-fashioned economists are highly theoretical," he added, "but nowadays, a significant portion of economics is actually really nuts-and-bolts, looking at issues like education or health, or the consequences of immigration or wage policy."

Card looked at the impact of minimum wages, immigration, and education on the labor market. His work has thrown conventional wisdom into disarray. His research into eateries in New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania found that raising the minimum wage does not always result in fewer jobs.

Finally, Angrist analyzed that the influence of education on incomes was substantially larger than earlier estimates based on traditional methodologies. Although there is still some debate over whether these results are completely trustworthy, Angrist and Krueger's work unquestionably set the bar for this type of research.

Bibliography

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