Economist Reports
Dr. Richard Mudge
Dr. Richard Mudge is President and Founder of Compass Transportation and Technology Inc. This firm specializes in the economics, finance, and policy of transportation, with an emphasis on AVs and shared mobility. He holds a Ph.D. in Regional Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Mudge is a nationally-recognized expert in the economics and finance of all modes of transportation. He has held a series of management positions as a transportation consultant. He also directed the transportation policy group for the Congressional Budget Office and worked in applied research at the RAND Corporation.
Dr. David Montgomery
Dr. David Montgomery is an expert on transportation policy, fuel markets, and environmental issues. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, was a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge University, and holds a B.A. in Social Studies from Wesleyan University. His professional experience includes tenures at the U.S. Department of Energy and Congressional Budget Office, he was a Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future, has taught at the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University, and he has received the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists’ 2004 award for a “Publication of Enduring Quality” for his pioneering work on emissions trading.
Dr. Erica Groshen
Dr. Erica Groshen served as the 14th Commissioner of Labor Statistics from January 2013 to January 2017, a Senate-confirmed post. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is the principal federal statistical agency responsible for measuring labor market activity, working conditions, and price changes in the U.S. economy. Prior to joining BLS, Dr. Groshen was Vice President in the Research and Statistics Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Dr. Groshen holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and a B.S. in economics and mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dr. John Paul Macduffie
Dr. John Paul Macduffie is Professor of Management at the Wharton School and Director of the Program on Vehicle and Mobility Innovation (PVMI) at Wharton’s Mack Institute for Innovation Management. PVMI carries on the work of the International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP), the research network founded at M.I.T. to study the challenges facing the global automotive industry, which Professor MacDuffie co-directed from 2001-2012. He received his B.A. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T.
Dr. Susan Helper
Dr. Susan Helper is the Frank Tracy Carlton Professor of Economics at Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. She served as the Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Commerce from 2013-2015, and as Senior Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2012-2013. She received a B.A. from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
Charles Carson
Charles Carson is a former Program Economist at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and assistant to the Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Labor. He holds a B.S. in economics from the University of Alabama.
Advance Praise for “Preparing U.S. Workers and Employers for an Autonomous Vehicle Future”
by Erica Groshen, Susan Helper, John Paul MacDuffie, and Charles Carson.
“Groshen, Helper, and MacDuffie provide the most thorough analysis yet of the biggest technological development coming down the road. It deserves widespread attention and to have its recommendations seriously debated.”
Lawrence Summers
Charles W. Eliot University Professor and former President, Harvard University; Former Secretary of the Treasury and Director of the White House National Economic Council
“In this paper, Groshen, Helper, MacDuffie and Carson take a historical approach to try to divine the impacts of the transition to Autonomous Vehicles (AV) on workers. The paper is thorough, and draws on a range of earlier waves of disruption, including autopilots in aviation, the industrial revolution, ATMs, globalization, and computer numerically controlled machines. A thorough review of the history of these waves of disruption is used to infer the likely effects of the coming AV revolution. This seems like an eminently plausible way to tackle this question, and one that I expect will have a major impact on the literature and policy discussions.”
Alan B. Krueger
Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Princeton University; Former Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and Chief Economist of the Treasury Department, and Chief Economist of the Department of Labor
“Autonomous vehicles may be coming soon on a wide scale and will certainly affect the U.S. labor market. Erica Groshen—a former head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics—and her academic colleagues have provided policymakers with a great place to start in understanding the potential effects of autonomous vehicles (AVs) on employment and skills. The study’s framework for tracing the labor market impacts of AVs is clear and insightful, and the lessons the study draws from the past—including its case studies of aircraft auto-pilots, ATMs, Engels’ pause, and more—are illuminating and important as we consider what the future might hold, and how we can navigate it most successfully.”
Michael R. Strain
John G. Searle Scholar and Director of Economic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
“Erica Groshen and her coauthors have produced an ambitious paper that offers a uniquely comprehensive, deeply-sourced, and levelheaded assessment of the medium- and long-term consequences of autonomous vehicles for the U.S. economy and the U.S. labor market. Rather than focus on either doomsday or ‘it’s all good’ scenarios, Groshen and her coauthors draw from historical examples, leading scholarship, and a large number of plausible scenarios to paint a picture of the likely pace of change, the probable stress points, the broad benefits, and the concentrated costs faced by a subset of people and places. Complementing this illuminating analysis, the authors offer an agenda for research, experimentation, and policy analysis that can help to guide us towards the best of these scenarios.”
David Autor
Ford Professor of Economics and Associate Department Head,
MIT Department of Economics
