The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Monday that David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guidok Imbens have been awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in economic sciences.
It stated that they were awarded based on their contributions to labor economics and analysis of causal relationships.
Card was recognized for groundbreaking work on the market effects of minimum wages, immigration and education. He showed, for example, that increasing the minimum wage does not necessarily lead to fewer jobs.
The other half of the prize was awarded to Angrist and Imbens for demonstrating how precise conclusions about cause and effect can be drawn from natural experiments — or situations that arise from real life.
“Card’s studies of core questions for society and Angrist and Imbens’ methodological contributions have shown that natural experiments are a rich source of knowledge.
Their research has substantially improved our ability to answer key causal questions, which has been of great benefit to society,” Peter Fredriksson, chair of the Economic Sciences Prize Committee, said in a statement.
Card was born in Guelph, Canada and is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Angrist is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Imbens was born in Eindhoven, Netherlands and is a professor at Stanford University in California.
The prize, officially known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences, was not instituted by Alfred Nobel. It was established by Sweden’s central bank and is awarded in memory of Nobel.
Card will receive one half of the 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.1 million) prize. The other half of the prize money will be split between Angrist and Imbens.
American economists Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson were awarded last year’s economics prize for their work on auction theory.
The Stanford University professors were recognized for theoretical discoveries that improved how auctions work and made it easier to allocate scarce resources. (CNN)
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