David Autor

Computers were programmed to swap out error-prone, inconsistent human calculation with digital perfection.

There is no question we are in an era of people asking, 'Is the Robocalypse upon us?

Trade may raise GDP. But it does make some people worse off.

I had never taken any economics. I literally didn't know what it was. I thought it was just about the study of money.

More than any other issue, economists have kind of been boosters for trade.

Work is really wrapped up with identity. Work is not just money for most people.

I'm not yet convinced that we will face an unemployment problem created by AI. There will certainly be some occupations eliminated - drivers of vehicles, many production jobs, etc. Whether this creates mass unemployment depends on how quickly this happens. If it happens overnight, it will be a huge disruption.

Markets are, in many settings, self-organizing and 'efficient' in terms of maximizing the welfare of both buyers and sellers.

Tax reform done right will improve incentives to invest in U.S. production and to repatriate profits.

Manufacturing value chains are global. Many U.S.-made goods have foreign components. Slapping on tariffs will raise prices and slow imports, but it will make us poorer and impede growth.

Labor is getting a shrinking slice of a pie that's not growing very much.

If you think about it, many of the great inventions of the last 200 years were designed to replace human labor. Tractors were developed to substitute mechanical power for human physical toil.

I'm a professor of economics and associate head of the MIT Department of Economics.

In 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded and crashed down to Earth less than two minutes after takeoff. The cause of that crash, it turned out, was an inexpensive rubber O-ring in the booster rocket that had frozen on the launchpad the night before and failed catastrophically moments after takeoff.

While I can't tell you what people are going to do for work 100 years from now, the future doesn't hinge on my imagination.

Workers and jobs are naturally heterogeneous, and the quality of their interaction when paired is difficult to forecast.

The Internet promises to open new channels for worker-firm communications. What are the consequences of this opening?

We have too few college graduates. We also have too few people who are prepared for college.

There was a great sag in employment beginning in 2000.

Jobs can change a lot without there being huge changes in employment rates.

The fact that a task cannot be computerized does not imply that computerization has no effect on that task. On the contrary, tasks that cannot be substituted by computerization are generally complemented by it. This point is as fundamental as it is overlooked.

One would expect that a surge of new automation opportunities in highly paid work would catalyze a surge of corporate investment in computer hardware and software. Instead, the opposite occurred.

The end of the 'tech bubble' in the year 2000 is, of course, widely recognized, as the NASDAQ stock index erased three-quarters of its value between 2000 and 2003.

A lot of the work in, say, construction or restaurants involves visual and motor flexibility. It also requires adaptability, in terms of answering questions, giving people directions, or taking orders.

Economists have understood since the Victorian era that the main benefits of trade come from comparative advantage: the idea that people can specialize in what they're good at and then benefit from exchange. The principle is no more mysterious than specialization in the labor market.