David Autor

The "China shock" refers to the surge of Chinese manufacturing imports into the United States following China's 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization. Autor, along with David Dorn and Gordon Hanson, documented how local labor markets exposed to this import competition experienced persistent job losses, reduced wages, and higher rates of disability and mortality.

Autor's research on "job polarization" shows how computerization and automation have eliminated routine middle-skill tasks while increasing demand for both high-skill abstract work and low-skill manual service jobs. This helps explain growing wage inequality and the hollowing out of middle-class employment opportunities in advanced economies.

Skill-biased technical change describes how technological advances like computerization tend to increase demand for skilled workers who can complement new technologies, while reducing demand for workers performing routine, codifiable tasks. Autor's work has refined this concept by showing that automation substitutes for specific tasks rather than entire occupations.

Autor is a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught since 2005. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and has served as editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives.