Israeli-American Joshua Angrist Wins 2021 Nobel Prize In Economics

Israeli-American Joshua Angrist, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a former faculty member at Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Department of Economics, was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize for Economics for his work in pioneering “natural experiments,” which use real-life situations to understand world impact on economic policy.

There were three Nobel Prize winners in this field. One half of the prize was awarded to David Card of the University of California at Berkeley while Angrist shared the other half with Guido Imbens fro Stanford University.

David Card of the University of California at Berkeley was awarded one half of the prize, while the other half was shared by Angrist and Guido Imbens from Stanford University.

Angrist ranks among the world’s top economists in labor economics, urban economics, and the economics of education.

Born in Ohio and raised in Pennsylvania, Angrist attended Oberlin College and lived in Israel from 1982 to 1985.

Angrist joined Harvard University as an assistant professor until 1991 and then returned to Israel as a senior lecturer at Hebrew University and later an Associate Professor.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem put out a statement to congratulate the former lecturer and professor.

“The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) heartily congratulates Professor Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens, along with David Carr, on being awarded the [prize formerly known as the] 2021 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.  The award was given for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships, and empirical contributions to labor economics, respectively,” the university said jn the statement, “Angrist spent a good number of years at HU, serving as a Senior Lecturer in Economics from 1991-1995 and as an Associate Professor at HU’s Economics Department from 1995-1996, before returning as a Lady Davis Fellow in 2004-2005.”

“His prize honors us and is a great privilege for the many HU students lucky enough to have learned with him,” President of Hebrew University, Professor Asher Cohen, added.

Unlike the other Nobel prizes, the economics award was established by the Swedish central bank in the memory of Alfred Nobel in 1968. It is the last prize announced each year.