Shared economics Nobel Prize for ‘natural experiments’ that answer questions
Copenhagen, Oct 11 (EFE).- David Card, Joshua D Angrist and Guido W Imbens on Monday received the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for cutting edge ‘natural experiments’ that help answer important questions for society, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.
All three researchers are based in the United States: Card is at the University of California, Berkeley, Angrist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, and Imbens at Stanford University.
Half of the prize went to Canadian Card for “his empirical contributions to labor economics,” while the other half was awarded jointly to Angrist and Dutch-born Imbens for “their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships.”
The award winners have shown that it is possible to answer many of the big questions in the social sciences that deal with cause and effect using natural experiments, according to the academy.
“The key is to use situations in which chance events or policy changes result in groups of people being treated differently, in a way that resembles clinical trials in medicine,” it said.
This year, the economics prize is worth 10 million Swedish kronor (1.1 million dollars), similar to the other Nobel Prizes awarded for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace that were announced last week.EFE
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