The 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded last month to three economists for their work on what economists call natural experiments: the real world equivalent in economics of a laboratory experiment.

Economist Andrew Charlton reflected on the great value of such natural experiments when he spoke at the National Press Club in Canberra last week, when he reflected on what we had learnt about economics as the COVID 19 pandemic became a once-in-a-lifetime natural experiment “that taught us a lot about economics in Australia, and particularly about poverty in Australia”.