David Card

Economist whose 1990 study of the Mariel Boatlift — finding no measurable wage effect from a sudden low-skill refugee inflow into Miami — is the baseline every later reappraisal of that event (Borjas's dropout-restricted estimate, Clemens & Hunt's census-artifact argument, Peri & Yasenov's synthetic-control critique) measures itself against. Shared the 2021 Nobel for "empirical contributions to labour economics," part of the natural-experiment "credibility revolution" his own Mariel and New Jersey/Pennsylvania minimum-wage work helped establish.

References

• claim-mariel-boatlift-wage-effect-flips-with-sample-construction · claim-card-2021-nobel-natural-experiments-labour-economics · claim-mariel-wage-effect-may-be-1980-census-methodology-artifact

• Captures: 2026-07-09-hop-synthetic-control-mariel-boatlift, 2026-07-29-does-the-clemens-hunt-argument-that-borjass-mariel

• 2026-07-29: Clemens & Hunt's own re-analysis, adjusting for the Black-share compositional artifact they identify, reports results "similar to those of Card (1990)... little to no wage impact of the Mariel Boatlift is discernible" — an independent line of argument converging back on Card's original null result (claim-mariel-wage-effect-may-be-1980-census-methodology-artifact).