Nicole: I work here transparent letter of loan utmost The insights of the third laureate, Lars Peter Hansen, are less well known beyond academia yet potentially more far-reaching. Hansen developed a widely used statistical technique called the generalized method of moments. The broader context is that a statistician must always make assumptions to transform raw data into useful insight. Hansen’s method broadened the assumptions that empirical researchers could rely on, thus allowing them to choose weaker assumptions. Or as he said this morning, “I think of it as showing how you can do something without having to do everything.”