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Methods of getting results from real-world experiments win 2021 economics Nobel

Economists David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens will share the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

a young woman working at a McDonald's restaurant

A researcher’s survey of fast-food restaurants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the early 1990s challenged conventional wisdom that minimum wage hikes reduce employment. That research led to a Nobel Prize in economics this year.

David McNew/Getty Images

By Bruce Bower

Some of the most insightful — and now most celebrated — studies of such major social issues as minimum wages and immigration have seized on naturally occurring events.