The 53e “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel”, awarded Monday, October 11 to David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens, three researchers working in the United States, act the shift of economic science, from the 1990s, in a “New spirit”, to use the term of Yannick L’Horty, professor at Gustave-Eiffel University (Paris-Est): that of a science dominated by theory to a science based on experimentation, more in line with the model of the so-called “Hard” like physics or biology.
In other words, rather than constructing theoretical models for explaining economic phenomena (such as “general equilibrium theory”, “contract theory” or “incentive theory”, etc.) and confronting them with behaviors and on real grounds, the experimental approach tries to find, either in reality or in a reality created for the needs of the experiment, grounds on which are tested economic measures such as an increase (or a decrease) of income, skills, training, taxes, labor, etc.
As for the test of a drug in medicine, the application of this variable in the field of experimentation is compared with a “control” field where it was not applied (the “placebo” in the case of the drug). , which makes it possible to measure the relative effects. This method is particularly useful for evaluating public policies, whether to measure their effects or to try to predict them by carrying out prior experiments.
“Natural experiences”
David Card’s best-known experiment was thus to measure the effect of the massive influx of Cuban refugees in 1980 on the labor market in Miami (wages, types of employment, unemployment) by comparing the latter to job markets in other cities that initially had the same characteristics as Miami but did not experience such an influx. In this case, this massive immigration had neither lowered wages nor increased unemployment.
It was in this case a “Natural experience”, as explained by Marie-Claire Villeval, professor at the University of Lyon-Saint-Etienne, that is to say of two sites that really existed. However, as Mme Villeval, “Natural experiments pose formidable methodological challenges because by definition, and unlike laboratory and field experiments, they are rarely reproducible”.
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