Professor David Autor, a world expert on the effect of trade on the labour market and wages, gave the 2017 IFS Annual Lecture on the topic of "Economic and Political Consequences of China’s Rise for the United States: Lessons from the China Shock".

Much of Professor Autor's research has focused on the impact of technological change and globalisation on inequality. In particular, his work has examined the effects of increased US-China trade on employment, politics and even marriage rates, addressing both the economic benefits and the costs of trade integration.

Professor Autor is the Ford Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Associate Head of their Department of Economics. In parallel to his position at MIT, Professor Autor is or has been affiliated with several research institutions, including the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Poverty Action Lab, and IZA. He has also been the editor of economic academic journals such as the Journal of Economic Perspectives (2009–14), Journal of Labor Economics (2007–08), Journal of Economic Literature (2004–06) and the Review of Economics and Statistics (2002-2008). He is a co-director of the MIT School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative (SEII), a research program focusing on the economics of education and the relationship between human capital and the American income distribution, as well as an associate director of the NBER Disability Research Center.

Below you can watch an interview in which he discusses his work on the China Shock.