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Goran K. Hansson (C), permanent secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and members of the Nobel Prize-winning economics committee Peter Fredriksson (L) and Eva Mork (R) give a press conference to announce the winners of the 2021 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economics in memory of Alfred Nobel.
CLAUDIO BRESCIANI | AFP | Getty Images
Economists David Card, Joshua D. Angrist and Guido W. Imbens received the Nobel Prize in economics.
Card was recognized for his contributions to labor economics, while Angrist and Imbens won the award for their contributions to the analysis of causal relationships.
The prize – the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel – is accompanied by a cash prize of 10 million Swedish kronor ($ 1.1 million) and a gold medal.
Card, 65, is a professor of economics at the University of Berkeley, California. Angrist, 61, is a Ford professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Imbens, 58, is a professor of economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
The Nobel committee said in a statement that the three laureates had “provided us with new information on the labor market and shown what conclusions about causes and effects can be drawn from natural experiments.”
Their approach had been used in other fields and had “revolutionized empirical research,” the committee added.
Natural experiences
The laureates’ research has helped find the cause and effect behind some major social issues, the committee said.
They did this using “natural experiments,” which examined how “random events or policy changes cause groups of people to be treated differently, in a way that resembles clinical trials in medicine,” explained the committee.
Card had used natural experiments to analyze the effects of minimum wages, immigration and education on the labor market.
His research from the early 1990s showed, for example, that increasing the minimum wage “does not necessarily lead to fewer jobs”.
At the same time, Angrist and Imbens had facilitated the interpretation of the data from these natural experiments, thanks to their methodological contributions.
Imbens, speaking by phone to an audience in Stockholm, said he was “delighted” to learn that he had received the award and to share it with his “good friends” Card and Angrist, who was even the best man of her marriage.
He said that a career in economics was an “excellent choice” for young people because there were “so many interesting questions, in so many areas where economists do useful work, both in politics as well as nowadays in many cases in the private sector industry. “
Peter Fredriksson, chairman of the economics prize committee, said the winners had shown that natural experiments are a “rich source of knowledge”.
“Their research has dramatically improved our ability to answer key causal questions, which has been of great benefit to society,” added Fredriksson.
Last year, Stanford University economists Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson received the award for their “improvements in auction theory and the invention of new auction formats.”
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel was awarded 53 times to 89 laureates between 1969 and 2021.
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