Guido Imbens facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Guido Imbens
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Imbens in 2022
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Guido Wilhelmus Imbens
3 September 1963 Geldrop, Netherlands
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| Spouse(s) | Susan Athey |
| Institution | Stanford University |
| Field | Econometrics |
| Alma mater | Erasmus University (BA) University of Hull (MSc) Brown University (MA, PhD) |
| Awards | Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2021) |
| Information at IDEAS / RePEc | |
Guido Imbens, born on September 3, 1963, is a smart economist from the Netherlands and America. He studies econometrics and statistics. He teaches economics at Stanford University, a famous school in California, where he has been since 2012.
In 2021, he won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Joshua Angrist. They won for their work on understanding "cause and effect" in real life. Their research focused on "natural experiments." These are like real-world situations that happen by chance. They help scientists learn when they can't do regular experiments. In 1994, Imbens and Angrist created a special method called LATE. It helps figure out cause and effect from these natural events. Their work, along with others, helped start a "credibility revolution" in economics.
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Early Life and School
Guido Wilhelmus Imbens was born in Geldrop, Netherlands, on September 3, 1963. When he was a kid, Imbens loved playing chess. He later said that his interest in chess helped him enjoy econometrics.
In high school, Imbens learned about the work of Dutch economist Jan Tinbergen. Because of Tinbergen, Imbens decided to study econometrics. He went to Erasmus University Rotterdam, where Tinbergen had taught. Imbens got his first degree in econometrics from Erasmus University in 1983. Later, in 1986, he earned another degree in economics from the University of Hull in the UK.
In 1986, one of Imbens' teachers, Tony Lancaster, moved to Brown University in the United States. Imbens followed him there to continue his studies. He earned two more degrees in economics from Brown University, one in 1989 and his PhD in 1991.
Guido Imbens' Career
Imbens has taught at several universities. These include Tilburg University, Harvard University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of California, Berkeley. He is an expert in econometrics. This field uses special methods to figure out cause and effect. Since 2019, he has been the editor of a major economics journal called Econometrica. As of 2021, he is a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He also works at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
Imbens is a member of several important academic groups. These include the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017, he became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was also named a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2020.
Understanding Cause and Effect
Guido Imbens worked with other economists like Joshua Angrist and Alan Krueger. They created ways to use real-life situations, called "natural experiments," to test ideas. For example, they studied how more years of school might affect how much money someone earns. Their methods for studying cause and effect are now used in many fields. These include social sciences and medical studies. Their work gave researchers tools to understand what they could learn from real-world data.
In an early project with Angrist, Imbens introduced a concept called Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE). This helps find cause and effect from data that wasn't collected in a lab. In a 1994 paper, they used the idea of natural experiments. These experiments look at how things change by using chance events in the real world. This is done instead of using controlled lab conditions. Lab experiments can be too expensive, take too long, or even be wrong to do. Their paper and the LATE idea had a big impact on research in economics and statistics.
In 2001, Imbens worked with statistician Donald Rubin and economist Bruce Sacerdote. They studied how "unearned money" affects how much people work. This means looking at how programs like Universal Basic Income might change if people want to work. To do this, they studied winners of the Massachusetts Lottery. These winners received money over many years, not all at once. This allowed the team to study the true effects of guaranteed income. They found that winning the lottery only slightly changed how much people worked. People who won a lot of money worked a little less. But those who won less money did not change their work hours. Unemployed people who won the lottery actually worked more than non-winners later on.
Some of Imbens' work was put into a book in 2015. He wrote it with Donald Rubin, and it's called Causal Inference for Statistics, Social, and Biomedical Sciences. Around 2016, he and his wife, Susan Athey, started using machine learning methods. They used special types of "random forests" to help understand different effects in cause-and-effect models.
Winning the Nobel Prize
Guido Imbens received the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He shared it with David Card and Joshua Angrist. They were honored for their work on methods to study cause and effect. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said their work gave "new insights about the labour market." They also showed how to find cause and effect from natural experiments. Their ideas have spread to many other fields and changed how research is done.
Personal Life
Imbens has been married to fellow economist Susan Athey since 2002. She also teaches at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The best man at their wedding was Joshua Angrist. Nineteen years later, Imbens and Angrist would share the Nobel Prize.
Guido Imbens has dual citizenship. He is a citizen of both the United States and the Netherlands.
Awards and Honors
- Honorary Doctorate, University of St. Gallen, 2014
- Horace Mann Medal, Brown University Graduate School, 2017
- Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, 2021
- Doctorate of Humane Letters, Brown University, 2022
- Great Immigrants Award, Carnegie Corporation of New York
- Honorary Doctorate, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 2023
See also
In Spanish: Guido Imbens para niños
