202 1-10-14 A brief and rough understanding of 2021Nobel Prize Economics (Guo Mu's 8-week notes)

Seeing that someone is analyzing the college entrance examination questions and knowledge points that may come out of the Nobel Prize, I was so scared that I quickly sorted them out. This is the economics prize, and others will be sorted out one after another.

2021101The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to David Card of the University of California, Berkeley, in recognition of his contribution to empirical labor economics.

Also awarded are Angrist and Guido W of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)? Imbens) in recognition of their contribution in causal identification.

What these three people have in common is that most economists are microeconomics, and most microeconomics are studying causality. Some people believe that this once again confirms the serious involution of mainstream western economics.

It means that economic theory is not new enough, but it is not wonderful either.

Related analytical articles emerge one after another, and then extended to the western mainstream economics, which is full of loopholes and difficult to face reality. There is no pure market economy in human history.

People who eat melons in academic disputes can't understand it. Let's find out what research the three winners have done under the big framework.

Card's research is: "Does foreign immigration have an impact on the local labor market?" (1990). There are few causal identification tools. This time, natural experiments were used to analyze Cuban immigrants who entered Miami from 1980. His conclusion is: it does not affect.

Another project studied by KaKa is: "Will workers lose their jobs when wages increase?" Card and his collaborators investigated the employment situation of 4 10 fast food restaurants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania before and after the minimum wage adjustment. A new causal identification method called DID is used in the analysis. Today, DID has become a very mainstream analysis method in causal analysis. Card and his collaborators have not found that the increase in the minimum wage will have any negative impact on employment.

Card's research has always been controversial. Then he took advantage of the trend to study: "Will the affirmative action act cause injustice?" After the repeal of the Affirmative Action Act, the relative number of African-American and Hispanic students in excellent state universities in California and Texas decreased during the period of 1.997- 1.999, mainly because the number of less excellent students decreased, while the application behavior of excellent students did not change significantly. The conclusion is simply described as: if you are good enough, there will be no injustice, and if you are not good enough, you will be adversely affected.

Angrist is a textbook author of microeconomics. His style is classic and practical, with a wide range of research. His core is microeconomic methods, and his application of instrumental variables (IV) and natural experimental methods is superb. This research is the most famous in the field of education. "Will education bring higher returns?" The conclusion is: yes. The lower the educational background, the lower the educational return rate; The more education you receive, the higher the educational return. This is a very important conclusion.

However, Inbens provided tools for microeconomic research, and most of his work was in econometric theory, that is, overcoming various small defects encountered in causal analysis. If the above two are chefs, then he is probably equivalent to grinding a kitchen knife.

Let's put another picture of three people.

My favorite brother Guo Mu and I both think the Nobel Prize winner is very practical. By the way, the value orientation of the Nobel Prize prefers "cross-border" influence.

Generally speaking, 202 1 Nobel Prize in Economics is a relatively small volume, which is a good conclusion.