I read this morning that the 2021 Nobel prize in economics went to three US economists best known for standardizing the practice of using "natural experiments" in economic research. In essence, this is studying what happens in real life to better understand what happens in real life.
I find it so ridiculously fascinating that academia can get so abstract at times that an idea as simple and obvious as this one is worthy of the world's most prestigious award. These men are my heroes. They are the ultimate anti-professors, faced with a difficult economics question about minimum wage and responding with, "I don't know...let's just try it and see what happens."
As my mother always said, we all could use a little David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens in us. Computer models only get us so far. Sometimes to get real conclusions you have to let the scenario really happen. Congratulations to the three most logical men I know for figuring this out.
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