David H. Autor (born June 9, 1964) is an American economist, public policy scholar, and professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he also acts as co-director of the School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative.

[3] He enrolled in Columbia University after high school, but dropped out and worked as an administrative assistant and software developer in a Boston hospital.

After graduating from Tufts, he pursued volunteer work at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco that was teaching computer skills to disadvantaged students.

He was made full professor at MIT in 2008 where he taught undergraduate courses titled "Microeconomic Theory and Public Policy" and "Putting Social Science to the Test: Experiments in Economics".

Finally, 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.