Joshua Angrist of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology won
the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics on Monday along with Guido Imbens from
Stanford University.

The Nobel prize in economics 2021 was awarded in two parts. The
first part went to David Card of the University of California and Berkeley and
the other half to Joshua Angrist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) and Guido Imbens from Stanford University. 

Joshua Angrist is the Ford Professor of Economics at MIT. He is
also the director of MIT’s School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative and a
research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research in the United
States.

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An Israeli-American citizen, Joshua Angrist has taught at
Harvard University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He joined MIT in 1996.
Angrist did his bachelors degree from Oberlin College in 1992 and his doctorate
in economics from Princeton in 1989.

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While announcing the prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences said that the three awardees have “completely reshaped empirical work
in the economic sciences”, adding that their research has substantially
improved “our ability to answer key causal questions, which has been of great
benefit to society.”

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For Joshua Angrist, the economics of education and school reform
as well as social programmes in the labour market form his key areas of
interest. Angrist has also worked on labour market regulation and institutions
as well as on econometric methods for programme and policy evaluation.

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Unlike the other Nobel prizes, the economics award wasn’t established
in the will of Alfred Nobel but by the Swedish central bank in his memory in
1968, with the first winner selected a year later. It is the last prize
announced each year.

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The Nobel Committee announced the Nobel Prizes 2021 over the
last week. The Nobel Prize in Physics went to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus
Hasselmann “for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying
variability and reliably predicting global warming”. Giorgio Parisi won the
Nobel in Physics “for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and
fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 went to Benjamin List and
David MacMillan for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis. David Julius
and Ardem Patapouitan won the Nobel Prize 2021 in Physiology and Medicine; Abdulrazzak
Gurnah won the Nobel in Literature and Maria Ressa and Dmitri Muratov won the
Nobel Peace Prize.