Goran Ok. Hansson (C), Everlasting Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and Nobel Economics Prize committee members Peter Fredriksson (L) and Eva Mork (R) give a press convention to announce the winners of the 2021 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Financial Sciences in Reminiscence of Alfred Nobel.
CLAUDIO BRESCIANI | AFP | Getty Pictures
Economists David Card, Joshua D. Angrist and Guido W. Imbens have been awarded the Nobel prize in economics.
Card was acknowledged for his contributions to labor economics, whereas Angrist and Imbens received the award for his or her contributions to the evaluation of causal relationships.
The award — the Financial institution of Sweden Prize in Financial Sciences in Reminiscence of Alfred Nobel — comes with a ten million Swedish krona ($1.1 million) money prize and a gold medal.
Card, 65, is a professor of economics on the College of Berkeley, California. Angrist, 61, is Ford professor of economics on the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how, and Imbens, 58, is a professor of economics on the Stanford Graduate College of Enterprise.
The Nobel committee mentioned in a press release that the three winners had “supplied us with new insights in regards to the labour market and proven what conclusions about trigger and impact may be drawn from pure experiments.”
Their strategy had been utilized in different fields and had “revolutionized empirical analysis,” the committee added.
Pure experiments
The winners’ analysis had helped discover the trigger and impact behind sure massive social questions, the committee mentioned.
They did so utilizing “pure experiments,” which checked out how “likelihood occasions or coverage modifications end in teams of individuals being handled otherwise, in a approach that resembles scientific trials in drugs,” the committee defined.
Card had used pure experiments to investigate the results of minimal wages, immigration and schooling on the labor market.
His analysis from the early Nineties has proven, for instance, that growing the minimal wage does “not essentially result in fewer jobs.”
In the meantime, Angrist and Imbens had made it simpler to interpret the information from these pure experiments, by way of their methodological contributions.
Imbens, talking through cellphone to an viewers in Stockholm, mentioned that he was “thrilled” to search out out he had been awarded the prize, and to share it along with his “good pals” Card and Angrist, who was even the very best man at his marriage ceremony.
He mentioned {that a} profession in economics was a “nice selection” for younger folks as a result of there have been “so many fascinating questions, in so many areas the place economists do helpful work, each in coverage, in addition to as of late in lots of circumstances within the non-public business.”
Peter Fredriksson, chair of the Financial Sciences Prize Committee, mentioned the winners had proven that pure experiments are a “wealthy supply of data.”
“Their analysis has considerably improved our means to reply key causal questions, which has been of nice profit to society,” Fredriksson added.
Final yr, Stanford College economists Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson were awarded the prize for his or her “enhancements to public sale concept and invention of latest public sale codecs.”
The Financial institution of Sweden Prize in Financial Sciences in Reminiscence of Alfred Nobel has been awarded 53 instances to 89 winners between 1969 and 2021.
