Three economists at US universities share Nobel prize

The 2021 Nobel Prize for economics was awarded on Monday to three U.S.-based economists, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced.

Half of the prize was awarded to David Card, a Canadian-born professor at the University of California, Berkeley, for his contributions to labor economics.

Card in the 1990s conducted research that found that raising the minimum wage doesn’t necessarily result in fewer jobs. The research challenged the conventional wisdom of economists at the time, according to the academy.

The other half of the prize was awarded to Joshua Angrist, an American-born professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Guido Imbens, a Dutch-born professor at Stanford University. They received the prize “for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships,” the academy said.

Peter Fredriksson, chair of the Economic Sciences Prize Committee, said in a news release that the three prize winners’ research “has substantially improved our ability to answer key causal questions, which has been of great benefit to society.”