Pittsburgh Native Awarded Nobel Prize For Economics

Pittsburgh PA

11 October, 2021

10:02 AM

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PITTSBURGH, PA — Pittsburgh native Joshua Angrist, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology labor economist, was a winner of the 2021 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Angrist shares the award with David Card of the University of California at Berkeley and Guido Imbens of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. According to MIT, Angrist was cited for establishing new ways to conduct "natural experiments" in economics — studies using datasets in which otherwise similar groups of people are separated by a single crucial variable. Angrist's work has allowed researchers to better understand cause and effect in complicated social situations. The Nobel citation states that natural experiments are "a rich source of knowledge. Their research has substantially improved our ability to answer key causal questions, which has been of great benefit to society." A 2018 profile in the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle noted that Angrist attended the Wightman School, Linden Elementary School and Taylor Allderdice High School, all in Squirrel Hill. He was a member of Congregation Dor Hadash and had his bar mitzvah there. He graduated from Oberlin College and received his master's and doctorate degrees in economics from Princeton University. Be the first to know what's happening in your community and region. With a free Patch subscription, you'll always be up to date on local and state news: https://patch.com/subscribe.