Joshua Angrist is the Ford Professor of Economics at MIT, a co-founder and director of MIT's Blueprint Labs, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. A dual U.S. and Israeli citizen, Angrist taught at Harvard and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem before coming to MIT in 1996. Angrist received his B.A. from Oberlin College in 1982 and completed his Ph.D. in Economics at Princeton in 1989.
Angrist and his collaborators develop and study innovative ways to harness the power of natural experiments to answer important economic questions. These new econometric tools help social scientists and policy-makers discover the causal effects of individual choices and government policy changes. In dozens of empirical studies, Angrist explores the economics of education and school reform; the impact of social programs on the labor market; and the labor market effects of immigration, regulation, and economic institutions.
In 2020, Angrist and MIT colleague Parag Pathak co-founded Avela, a software start-up focusing on products that use cutting-edge research to help schools and school districts boost enrollment, streamline operations, support families, and enhance equity.
Angrist received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 2021 (with Co-Laureates Guido Imbens and David Card). He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society, and has served on many editorial boards and as a co-editor of the Journal of Labor Economics.
In addition to scholarship and teaching, Angrist and Steve Pischke co-authored Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion and Mastering 'Metrics: The Path from Cause to Effect. These texts are not only among the most widely seen in econometrics classrooms, they’re surely the funniest. Through their books and their ongoing scholarship, Angrist and Pischke hope to bring econometric instruction out of the Stones Age.