Joshua Angrist

Joshua Angrist
Born	Joshua David Angrist 18 9, 1960
Birthplace	Columbus, Ohio, U.S.
Nationality	American, Israeli
Occupation	Economist, academic
Title	Ford Professor of Economics
Employer	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Known for	Local average treatment effect, instrumental variables methods, causal inference in economics
Education	Princeton University (MA, PhD)
Awards	Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2021)
Website	[[economics.mit.edu/faculty/angrist economics.mit.edu/faculty/angrist] Official site]

Joshua David Angrist (Template:Lang-he; born September 18, 1960) is an Israeli American economist who holds the position of Ford Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2021, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with Guido Imbens, "for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships," while the other half of the prize went to David Card for his empirical contributions to labor economics. Angrist's career has been defined by his pioneering use of quasi-experimental research designs—particularly instrumental variables—to study the effects of public policies and changes in economic or social circumstances on outcomes such as education, earnings, and military service. Born in Columbus, Ohio, and educated at Oberlin College and Princeton University, Angrist has spent decades at the intersection of econometrics, labor economics, and the economics of education, producing research that has fundamentally shaped how social scientists establish cause-and-effect relationships from observational data. He is a co-founder and co-director of MIT's Blueprint Labs, a research center focused on the relationship between human capital and income inequality in the United States, and co-founded Avela, an education technology company.

Early Life

Joshua David Angrist was born on September 18, 1960, in Columbus, Ohio, United States. He holds dual American and Israeli citizenship. In a 2022 interview with the Nobel Prize organization, Angrist reflected on his youth, describing an aversion to studying as a young person—an ironic detail given his later career as one of the most influential economists and educators of his generation. Despite this early disposition, Angrist went on to pursue higher education and eventually became deeply engaged with questions about the causal effects of education and public policy—topics that would define his scholarly contributions for decades.

Angrist's background as an Israeli American has informed aspects of his research career, including work utilizing data from the Israeli military and education systems. His dual nationality and cross-cultural experience positioned him to draw on institutional knowledge from both the United States and Israel in constructing the natural experiments and quasi-experimental designs for which he became known.

Education

Angrist completed his undergraduate education at Oberlin College, a liberal arts institution in Oberlin, Ohio, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. The Oberlin College class of 1982 would later celebrate his achievements, and the institution noted his Nobel Prize win with pride.

Following his time at Oberlin, Angrist pursued graduate study at Princeton University, where he earned both a Master of Arts and a Doctor of Philosophy in economics. His doctoral dissertation, titled Econometric Analysis of the Vietnam Era Draft Lottery, was completed in 1989. His doctoral advisor was Orley Ashenfelter, a prominent labor economist, and his academic advisors also included David Card—who would share the 2021 Nobel Prize with Angrist and Imbens—and Whitney Newey, a leading econometrician. The dissertation research on the Vietnam-era draft lottery proved to be formative for Angrist's career, establishing the methodological framework of using natural experiments and instrumental variables that would become his hallmark contribution to the field.

Career

Early Academic Career and the Vietnam Draft Lottery Research

Angrist's doctoral research on the Vietnam-era draft lottery represented a landmark application of instrumental variables methods to a pressing empirical question. The draft lottery, which randomly assigned draft eligibility to young American men based on their birthdates, created a natural experiment that Angrist exploited to study the effects of military service on subsequent earnings and other life outcomes. This work demonstrated how random or quasi-random variation in policy exposure could be used to identify causal effects in settings where traditional experimental designs were not feasible. The dissertation laid the groundwork for a broader research program on the use of quasi-experimental methods in economics and social science.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Angrist joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he rose to the position of Ford Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics. At MIT, he became one of the department's most prominent researchers and educators, contributing to the training of a new generation of economists. Among his doctoral students are several scholars who have themselves become leading figures in economics, including Esther Duflo, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2019; Melissa Kearney, a labor economist and public policy scholar; and Jeffrey R. Kling, a researcher at the Congressional Budget Office.

Angrist is a co-founder and co-director of MIT's Blueprint Labs, a research center that investigates the relationship between human capital—including education and skills—and income inequality in the United States. Blueprint Labs has become a hub for applied empirical research on education policy, school quality, and labor market outcomes.

Methodological Contributions: Instrumental Variables and the Local Average Treatment Effect

Angrist's most significant scholarly contribution is his development, alongside Guido Imbens, of the framework for interpreting instrumental variables (IV) estimates in the presence of heterogeneous treatment effects. Their work formalized the concept of the local average treatment effect (LATE), which provides a precise interpretation of IV estimates as the average causal effect for a specific subpopulation—those whose behavior is changed by the instrument (often called "compliers"). This theoretical innovation resolved longstanding ambiguities about what IV methods actually estimate and provided a rigorous foundation for the use of natural experiments in empirical research.

The LATE framework, introduced in a series of influential papers in the 1990s, transformed the practice of empirical economics and extended its influence to political science, sociology, epidemiology, and other fields. By clarifying the conditions under which causal claims can be drawn from observational data, Angrist and Imbens provided researchers with a toolkit for credible causal inference that did not require fully randomized experiments. This body of work was central to the Nobel Committee's decision to award them the prize in 2021.

Research in Labor Economics and the Economics of Education

Beyond his methodological contributions, Angrist has conducted extensive empirical research in labor economics and the economics of education. His studies have examined the effects of class size on student achievement, the impact of school vouchers and charter schools, and the returns to education more broadly. He has used data from a variety of institutional settings, including Israeli schools and the U.S. public education system, to construct quasi-experimental research designs.

A recurring theme in Angrist's research has been the question of whether attending elite educational institutions provides measurable benefits beyond what students would achieve at less selective schools. In an April 2025 appearance at ZEW (the Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research), Angrist presented findings challenging the notion that elite institutions confer large independent advantages on their students—a finding he characterized as debunking "the elite illusion." This research builds on a longstanding body of work examining how selection effects can create misleading impressions about the causal impact of school quality.

Angrist has also contributed to research on the predictive validity of school surveys relative to conventional test scores. A 2025 working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, co-authored by Angrist, used data from New York City's middle and high schools to compare the long-run predictive validity of school climate surveys with that of conventional test score value-added measures.

In addition, Angrist has applied instrumental variables methods beyond traditional labor and education economics contexts. A 2025 publication in the American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings demonstrated how instrumental variables methods revealed larger effects of menopausal hormone therapy in the landmark Women's Health Initiative clinical trial, illustrating the broad applicability of his methodological framework to medical research and public health.

Textbooks and Pedagogy

Angrist is co-author of two influential textbooks that have shaped the way econometrics and empirical methods are taught in economics programs around the world. Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion, co-authored with Jörn-Steffen Pischke, provides an accessible but rigorous treatment of the core tools of modern empirical economics, including regression, instrumental variables, differences-in-differences, and regression discontinuity designs. The book has been adopted as a standard text in graduate and advanced undergraduate econometrics courses globally. Angrist and Pischke also co-authored Mastering 'Metrics: The Path from Cause to Effect, aimed at a broader audience and providing an introduction to the econometric toolkit used in the "credibility revolution" in empirical economics.

In his 2022 Nobel Prize interview, Angrist discussed his views on teaching, emphasizing the importance of collaboration and intellectual friendship in academic work. He stated, "It's more fun to work with your friends," reflecting a collaborative ethos that has characterized his research partnerships throughout his career.

Avela and Applied Work

Beyond his academic career, Angrist co-founded Avela, an education technology startup. Avela provides application and enrollment-related software and services to school districts, schools, organizations such as Teach for America, and the U.S. military. The company reflects Angrist's longstanding interest in the intersection of education policy and practical implementation, extending his research agenda into the realm of applied technology and institutional design.

Affiliations

Angrist has been a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), affiliated with its programs in education, labor studies, and other areas. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He ranks among the world's top economists as measured by research output and citations on the IDEAS/RePEc rankings in labor economics, urban economics, econometrics, and the economics of education.

Personal Life

Angrist holds dual citizenship in the United States and Israel. In his March 2022 interview with the Nobel Prize organization, he reflected on his personal approach to academic life, emphasizing the role of friendship and collaboration in sustaining a productive career. He described the value of working with friends and collaborators as central to his experience as a researcher and teacher. Angrist has also spoken publicly about his early lack of interest in formal study, a trait that he has discussed with some humor in the context of his later academic achievements.

Recognition

Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

On October 11, 2021, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens would share one half of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships." The other half of the prize was awarded to David Card—Angrist's former academic advisor at Princeton—"for his empirical contributions to labour economics." The Nobel Committee highlighted the importance of the LATE framework and the broader quasi-experimental revolution in economics that Angrist's work helped to catalyze.

At the time of the announcement, Angrist was the Ford Professor of Economics at MIT. MIT News noted his contributions to the field and his role in training influential economists, including Nobel laureate Esther Duflo.

Other Honors

Angrist is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His work is among the most cited in economics, and he is consistently ranked among the top economists worldwide according to the IDEAS/RePEc rankings across multiple fields.

Oberlin College, Angrist's undergraduate alma mater, also recognized his Nobel Prize, with The Oberlin Review publishing an interview with Angrist following the announcement.

Legacy

Angrist's contributions to econometrics and empirical economics have had a lasting impact on how researchers across the social and medical sciences approach questions of causality. The local average treatment effect framework, developed with Guido Imbens, has become a foundational concept in modern econometrics and is a standard topic in graduate-level courses worldwide. His emphasis on quasi-experimental research designs and the "credibility revolution" in economics has shifted the discipline toward greater rigor in identifying causal effects from observational data.

Through his teaching and mentorship at MIT, Angrist has influenced a generation of economists. His doctoral students include Esther Duflo, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in 2019 for her experimental approach to alleviating global poverty, as well as other scholars who have made significant contributions to labor economics, public policy, and applied econometrics.

His textbooks, particularly Mostly Harmless Econometrics, have shaped the pedagogical approach to empirical methods in economics and have made advanced econometric techniques accessible to a broader audience. The book's practical orientation and emphasis on credible research design reflect Angrist's broader influence on the norms and standards of empirical research in the field.

Angrist's ongoing research, including his work on the predictive validity of school surveys, the effects of school quality, and the application of instrumental variables to clinical trials, demonstrates a continued engagement with both methodological innovation and substantive policy questions. His founding of Blueprint Labs and Avela reflects an effort to extend academic research into institutional practice and technology.