Nobel Economics Prize Goes To 3 US-Based Professors

The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded on Monday morning to a trio of U.S.-based professors: David Card of the University of California, Berkeley, and a joint presentation to Joshua D. Angrist of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Guido W. Imbens of Stanford University.

What Happened: The Canadian-born Card was cited for the use of natural experiments to determine the impact of minimum wages, immigration and education on the labor market.

“His studies from the early 1990s challenged conventional wisdom, leading to new analyses and additional insights,” said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in announcing the honors. “The results showed, among other things, that increasing the minimum wage does not necessarily lead to fewer jobs.”

Angrist, an American with dual Israeli citizenship, and the Dutch-born Imbens were cited for enabling a user-friendly interpretation of Card’s data, with the academy praising how their “precise conclusions about cause and effect can be drawn from natural experiments.”

“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,” said Peter Fredriksson, chairman of the Economic Sciences Prize Committee. “Their research has substantially improved our ability to answer key causal questions, which has been of great benefit to society.”

Related Link: 5 Italian Stocks To Consider For Columbus Day

What Else Happened: The award, formally known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences, is the most prestigious global honor presented to economists. The prize consists of a gold medal and $1.1 million in cash.

Card’s research was conducted in partnership with Alan Krueger of Princeton University, who served in the Clinton and Obama administrations. Krueger passed away in 2019, but Nobel Prizes are traditionally not presented posthumously — a point raised by Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist and previous winner of the Economics Prize.

“It's truly tragic that Alan Krueger isn't able to share in it, as he surely would have,” Krugman tweeted, who defined the award-winning work as the “Card-Krueger approach.”

Photo: Nobel laureates David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens; image courtesy of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.