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

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" The last 200 years, we've had an incredible amount of automation. We have tractors that do the work that horses and people used to do on farms. We don't dig ditches by hand anymore. We don't pound tools out of wrought iron. We don't do bookkeeping with books! But this has not, in net, reduced the amount of employment. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There's never been a better time to be a worker with special skills or the right education, because these people can use technology to create and capture value. "

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

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

" There's always new work to do. Adjusting to the rapid pace of technological change creates real challenges, seen most clearly in our polarized labor market and the threat that it poses to economic mobility. Rising to this challenge is not automatic. It's not costless. It's not easy. But it is feasible. "

" History has suggested that the pessimists have been wrong time and time again. "

" 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. "

" If I lose my job at a furniture factory where I've worked for decades, no amount of cheaper toys and raincoats at Wal-Mart is going to make me whole again. "

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

" The fact that people are dropping out of the labour force says one of two things: either employers have no use for them, or they have no use for the jobs that are being offered at the wages they can command. "

" People tend to think about trade as if it's competition between companies - if Apple wins, Google loses. But that's false. Trade makes nations better off in general. Now, I want to be clear. I'm not saying that everything about trade is good and beneficial. Trade also has costs. "

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

" Work is what structures adults' lives: it gives us purpose, focus, a set of responsibilities, and an identity. So when people are not participating in the labour market, all sorts of other things often start to go wrong. "

" I work a lot on skill demands and changes in labor markets having to do with technology and with trade as well. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" The long-term policies that will be most effective all have to do with investment: investing in ourselves, investing in opportunities, creating good schools, and creating situations where people can acquire skills that enable them to be successful. "

" 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. "

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

" I did a lot of blue collar work. I also worked as a temp. I did, you know, light construction and cleaning. I did clerical temping. I also fix cars and motorcycles and electronics. "

" I think we labor economists like to think of ourselves as being closer to the people. "

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

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

" China's rise is really a kind of a world historical event. This is the largest country in the world. It has caused a wholesale substantial contraction of U.S. manufacturing employment. "

" 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. "