Princeton University economist Alan Krueger has been named a winner of the IZA Prize in Labor Economics in recognition of his influential research on education and labor-market issues.
Professor Krueger will share the award with David Card, a University of California at Berkeley economist and frequent collaborator who served on the Princeton University faculty from 1983 to 1997.
The prize, which is worth about $64,000, honors research that addresses important public policy concerns. It is awarded annually by Germany’s Institute for the Study of Labor, with support from the Deutsche Post Foundation.
Professor Krueger will receive the prize at a Wednesday ceremony in Berlin.
"David Card and Alan Krueger have stimulated labor economics for many years with their original research approach, the practical relevance of their results and their remarkable use of natural experiments to test commonly accepted models," said IZA Director Klaus Zimmermann.
Professor Krueger and Professor Card were cited for their analysis of the impact of education, training and human capital on earnings, such as research demonstrating that the quality of schooling has an enormous influence on future income.
They also have made contributions to the analysis of the minimum wage, showing that moderate increases do not have the destructive impact on employment that many critics fear. They received international attention for their 1994 study comparing fast-food employment in New Jersey and Pennsylvania before and after the New Jersey minimum wage increase.
Professor Krueger’s work also has included research on the controversial New York City school voucher experiment, in which he found that giving students vouchers to attend private school did not improve their performance on standardized tests.
Professor Krueger, the Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Policy, has been a Princeton faculty member since 1987. He is the founding director of the university’s Survey Research Center.

