Re-evaluating Job Descriptions to Attract Early-Career Talent

The 2021 Nobel Prize for Economics went for David Card, Joshua D. Angrist, and Guido W. Imbens for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships. This year’s Laureates – have provided us with new insights about the labor market and shown what conclusions about cause and effect can be drawn from natural experiments. Their approach has spread to other fields and revolutionized empirical research.

Natural Experiments vary from Clinical Experiments because the researcher may not control the research conditions perfectly.  As a result, Natural Experiments researchers have to look at close or near close ecosystems when selecting their experiments.  Using natural experiments, David Card has analyzed the labor market effects of minimum wages, immigration, and education. His studies from the early 1990s challenged conventional wisdom, leading to new analyses and additional insights. The results showed, among other things, that increasing the minimum wage does not necessarily lead to fewer jobs. (The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2021. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2021. Sun. 7 Nov 2021)