David Card
Facts
© Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Clément Morin
David Card
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2021
Born: 1956, Guelph, Canada
Affiliation at the time of the award: University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
Prize motivation: “for his empirical contributions to labour economics”
Prize share: 1/2
Work
Many of the big questions in the social sciences deal with cause and effect. Some of these questions are possible to answer using natural experiments, in which chance events or policy changes result in groups of people being treated differently. Using natural experiments, David Card has analysed the labour market effects of minimum wages, immigration and education. The results showed, among other things, that increasing the minimum wage does not necessarily lead to fewer jobs, as was previously thought.