Joshua D. Angrist, David Card, and Guido W. Imbens Awarded 2021 Nobel Prize for Studying Labor Economics and Natural Experiments

NBER Research Associates Joshua D. Angrist, David Card, and Guido W. Imbens were awarded the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in recognition of their contributions to labor economics and the analysis of natural experiments.

In announcing the prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences explained that “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…” 

At the time of the award, Angrist was the Ford Professor of Economics at MIT, Card was the Class of 1950 Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and Imbens was the Applied Econometrics Professor and Professor of Economics at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. All three were affiliated with the NBER Labor Studies Program, which Card directed for nearly a decade. Angrist and Card were also affiliated with the NBER programs on Children and the Economics of Education, and Card with the Economics of Aging Program.

More information on these Nobel laureates