Changing your degree halfway through might just lead to a Nobel Prize—at least, this was the case for one former Queen’s economics student.
David Edward Card, ArtSci ’78 and LLD ’99, returned to Queen’s on Sept. 19 to deliver a lecture in Mackintosh-Corry Hall. A Guelph-born labour economist and professor, Card is known for his empirical approach to economics, particularly his analyses of labour markets, lower wages, and education. In 2021, he was tly awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Card, sharing the award with Guido Imbens and Joshua Angrist, was awarded half of the prize for his “empirical contributions to labour economics.” The award recognized his use of natural experiments to demonstrate how economic concepts function in real-world settings.
Card sat down with The Journal three years ago after his prize win. He’s now back to reflect on the time ed and speak on economics to a full-packed lecture hall.
“Using natural experiments, David Card has analyzed the labour market effects of minimum wages, immigration and education. The results showed, among other things, that increasing the minimum wage does not necessarily lead to fewer jobs, as was previously thought,” the prize winner said in a press release.
Card began his studies at Queen’s as a physics major, but his interest shifted after helping his girlfriend with her economics homework. While reading her textbook, written by then-Queen’s professor Richard Lipsey, he became captivated by the subject. This curiosity led him to enroll in an economics course, and soon after, he swapped physics for economics entirely.
“I had never really studied economics before. Agriculture is one area where it works really well. It describes a paradox: if you have a good year in production, it can actually be bad because prices go down. So, while it may be a good year in of production, it’s not necessarily good for revenue,” Card said in an interview with The Journal.
Card has published more than 130 journal articles and book chapters over the course of his career, but he gained prominence for his groundbreaking studies in the 1990s, which used empirical evidence to challenge widely held economic beliefs about immigration, minimum wage, and school quality.
He later studied the impact of a large influx of Cuban refugees into Miami, which increased the labour force by seven per cent. Contrary to common economic predictions that this would lower wages and raise unemployment, especially for Black workers, Card found that unemployment among Black workers in Miami actually declined—a surprising outcome for both him and the broader economics community.
Professor Michael Abbott, now retired, was Card’s honours thesis advisor during his fourth year of teaching at Queen’s.
“I never had an easier supervision. I kept thinking something would go seriously wrong, but it never did. […] I may never work with a student as talented as David Card. I’d still say that today,” Abbott said in the Queen’s Alumni Review.
Queen’s professor emeritus, Charles Beach, recognized Card’s talent early on. Beach recalls telling his father, a retired economics professor from McGill University, about his exceptional research assistant. Although his father was doubtful at the time, Beach’s assessment proved accurate. He keeps a desk plaque Card made for him at a General Motors plant in Oshawa, which reads, “Economist at Work.” Despite his abilities, Beach re Card as a humble student, according to the Alumni Review.
According to Card, successful research depends on several factors, one being the clarity of the questions asked. He believes a good research question is either already relevant or will soon become important, prompting people to seek answers. Success comes when the method used to answer the question proves useful in other contexts.
“The two main ways in economics, at least, that something becomes influential is either because the particular question was maybe [something] people didn’t even know was a question or the way you answered was novel or helpful,” Card said in an interview with The Journal.
Card offers students one key piece of advice when it comes to dealing with social aspects of their studies: appreciate the progress made along the way. He encourages students to recognize while life may not be perfect, there remains continuous progress even amid the chaos.
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