Three US-based economists jointly won the 2021 Nobel Prize in economics for their contributions to labor economics and analysis of causal relationships, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Monday.
The award – the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel – went to American economist David Card "for his empirical contributions to labour economics," and US economist Joshua D. Angrist and Dutch-born American economist Guido W. Imbens "for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships."
Last year, the prize in economic sciences was jointly awarded to US economists Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson “for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats.”
This year’s Nobel Prizes have been awarded to a total of 13 people, including David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian in physiology or medicine; Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann, and Giorgio Parisi in physics; Benjamin List and David MacMillan in chemistry; Abdulrazak Gurnah in literature; and Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov in peace.
Sweden’s central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, established the prize in economic sciences in memory of Sir Alfred Nobel in 1968.
Alfred Nobel was a Swedish scientists specialized particularly in the fields of chemistry and engineering, and he is most famously known for the inventing the dynamite.
Before his death in 1896, Nobel bequeathed all of his "remaining realisable assets" to be used to establish five prizes which became known as "Nobel Prizes" in his last will and testament he signed on Nov. 27, 1895, be endowed “to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.”
The Nobel Prize, generally widely regarded as the most prestigious award in the fields, was first awarded in 1901.
