https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2021/summary/
bbc.co.uk 11/10/2021 Nobel economics prize rewards work on minimum wage – David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens have been awarded this year’s Nobel prize for economics for work that “challenged conventional wisdom”.
…” Prof Card is best known for his study of the impact of minimum wage increases on employment in US states. His findings prompted researchers to review their opinion that such increases always lead to falls in employment. … their findings, that the minimum wage had not led to significant job losses, was not immediately accepted. “People thought we were either cooking the books or had lost our minds or did something untoward or foolish,” he said. However the methodology, of collecting and analysing real world data, opened people’s eyes to a new way of analysing the economy, he said. “…
financialpost.com/ 20/10/2021 A Nobel Prize for methods, not results – The three economists who were recognized have helped free us from the tyranny of randomized control trials- by Gregory Mason
economist.com 10/2021 The Nobel prize in economics celebrates an empirical revolution David Card shares this year’s award with Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens
nature.com 10/2021 Nobel-winning ‘natural experiments’ approach made economics more robust Joshua Angrist, Guido Imbens and David Card share the prize for finding a way to identify cause and effect in social science.
voxeu.org/ 16/10/2021 Natural experiments in labour economics and beyond: The 2021 Nobel laureates David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens by Jörn-Steffen Pischke
The 2021 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences has been awarded to David Card of the University of California, Berkeley, “for his empirical contributions to labour economics”, and to Joshua Angrist of MIT and Guido Imbens of Stanford University “for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships”. This column explains how the use of natural experiments in empirical economics has ushered in much progress in the analysis of causal relationships. The ensuing ‘credibility revolution’ over the past three decades has been transformational for the study of key policy challenges, including education, immigration and the minimum wage.
theconversation.com 10/2021 Does raising the minimum wage kill jobs? The centurylong search for the elusive answer shows why economics is so difficult – but data sure helps by Veronika Dolar
…”For decades it was conventional wisdom in the field of economics that a higher minimum wage results in fewer jobs. In part, that’s because it’s based on the law of supply and demand, one of the most well-known ideas in economics. Despite it being called a “law,” it’s actually two theories that suggest if the price of something goes up – wages, for example – demand will fall – in this case, for workers. Meanwhile, their supply will rise. Thus an introduction of a high minimum wage would cause the supply of labor to exceed demand, resulting in unemployment. But this is just a theory with many built-in assumptions. Then, in 1994, David Card, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of this year’s Nobel winners, and the late Alan Krueger used a natural experiment to show that, in the real world, this doesn’t actually happen. In 1992, New Jersey increased its minimum wage while neighboring Pennsylvania did not. Yet there was little change in employment. …”…