David Card on one side and Joshua D. Angrist and Guido W. Imbens on the other won the Nobel Prize for Economics 2021. The first half of the prize therefore went to the Canadian Card born in 1956, Phd in Princeton, currently teaches at the University of Berkeley in California and was awarded "for his empirical contribution to labor economics". The second half of the prize was awarded jointly to the two economists: the American Angrist, born in 1960, also a PhD at Princeton, teaches at the prestigious MIT while the Dutchman Imbens, born in 1963, is a professor at Stanford in California. They were awarded for "their methodological contribution to the analysis of causal relationships".
The announcement was made by the Swedish Academy of Sciences a few minutes late due to the difficulty of reaching the winners due to the time difference. The Nobel Prize winner for Economics focused above all on cause and effect relationships in the labor market and on the correlations between events. Many of the important issues faced by the social sciences, members of the Swedish Academy explained, have to do with questions of cause and effect. What is the impact of immigration on wages and employment levels? How does better training affect the future earnings of those who study? It's not easy to answer questions like these because – explains the Academy – there are no parameters to compare against: we don't know what would have happened if there had been less immigration or if the student had abandoned his education instead of studying.
“Card's studies of key societal issues and those of Angrist and Imbens on methodological contributions have demonstrated that natural experiments are a rich source of knowledge. Their research has substantially improved our ability to answer questions about causal relationships, and this has been of great benefit to society”, was the comment with which Peter Fredriksson, chairman of the Nobel Prize Committee for Economic Sciences presented the names of the winners.
