Nobel Prize for Economics: Card, Angrist and Imbens awarded

Status: 11.10.2021 12:36 p.m.

The Nobel Prize in Economics goes to the US researchers David Card and Joshua D. Angrist and the Dutchman Guido W. Imbens. This was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Economics goes to three researchers. The award will be given to David Card, Joshua D. Angrist and Guido W. Imbens, as announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. The prize is endowed with ten million crowns, the equivalent of around 960,000 euros.

Canadian-born Card from the University of California at Berkeley will receive half of the prestigious award for his empirical contributions to labor economics, as the Academy’s Secretary General, Göran Hansson, said at the announcement. Ohio-born Angrist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and the Dutch-American scientist Imbens from Stanford University share the other half for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships.

A drawing of the three card winners, Angrist and Imbens.

Image: dpa

Answers to previously unanswered questions

All three researchers “provided us with new insights into the labor market and showed what conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect from natural experiments,” the academy justified its decision. “Your approach has spilled over into other areas and revolutionized empirical research.”

Many of the big questions in the social sciences have to do with cause and effect – such as how immigration affects wages and employment levels. These questions are difficult to answer because there are no comparisons. “We don’t know what would have happened if there had been less immigration,” said the academy. However, this year’s award winners have shown that it is possible to answer these and similar questions with natural experiments.

Christian Blenker, ARD Stockholm, on the winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics

Tagesschau 12:00 p.m., 11.10.2021

Prize is donated by the Swedish Central Bank

All Nobel Prize winners for this year have been named. The Nobel Prize for Economics, which has been awarded since the late 1960s, is the only one that does not go back to the will of the prize sponsor and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel. It was donated by the Swedish Central Bank and is therefore not, strictly speaking, one of the classic Nobel Prizes. Nevertheless, it will be presented together with the other prizes on the anniversary of Nobel’s death, December 10th.

First a German and the winners

So far, only one German has been among the Nobel laureates in economics: the Bonn scientist Reinhard Selten received it in 1994 together with John Nash and John Harsanyi for their groundbreaking contributions to non-cooperative game theory.

Scientists from the USA are particularly often honored with the economics award. Last year it went to the US economists Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson, who were honored for their improvements in auction theory and the invention of new auction formats.

Nobel laureates in economics announced

Sofie Donges, ARD Stockholm, October 11, 2021 1:12 p.m.

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