Labor, no matter how inexpensive, will become a less important asset for growth and employment expansion, with labor-intensive, process-oriented manufacturing becoming a less effective way for early-stage developing countries to enter the global economy.

Michael Spence

Globalization is the process by which markets integrate worldwide.

Michael Spence

Robotics has already made significant inroads in electronics assembly, with sewing trades - traditionally many countries' first entry point to the global trading system - likely to come next.

Michael Spence

Properly targeted public investment can do much to boost economic performance, generating aggregate demand quickly, fueling productivity growth by improving human capital, encouraging technological innovation, and spurring private-sector investment by increasing returns.

Michael Spence

In economies with excess productive capacity, targeted investment can yield a double benefit, generating short-run demand and boosting growth and productivity thereafter.

Michael Spence

There is no question that the recovery from the global recession triggered by the 2008 financial crisis has been unusually lengthy and anemic.

Michael Spence

On their own, tariff and trade barriers, if viewed as transitory negotiating tactics, will not significantly change global investment patterns or the structure of global supply chains and employment.

Michael Spence

During my Ph.D. program, I became interested in the informational structure of markets that turned into the work on signaling, which was the part of my early work that was recognized for the Nobel Prize, but it was not really a subject at the time.

Michael Spence

With external help, even the countries ravaged by World War II recovered.

Michael Spence

We tend to think that employment is employment, and we don't ask the question: is this rewarding employment? Research establishes pretty clearly that typical notions of happiness - that more is better - really don't correspond to the way people think and feel.

Michael Spence

Although everyone does benefit from lower-priced goods and services, people also care greatly about the chance to be productively employed and the quality of their work. Declining employment opportunities feel real and immediate; the rise in real incomes brought by lower prices does not.

Michael Spence

My father once said about being a parent that it is the only thing you do that requires a very long period of learning, and at about the time that you are becoming competent, you don't need the skills anymore. Notwithstanding this modest assessment of their parenting skills, they were wonderful parents.

Michael Spence

Globalization has redefined the competition for employment and incomes in the United States. Tradeoffs will have to be made between the two.

Michael Spence

Actions aimed at supporting deleveraging and balance-sheet repair - such as recognizing losses, writing down assets, and recapitalizing banks - carry longer-term benefits but short-term costs.

Michael Spence

China's economic transformation began with the introduction in the 1980s of market incentives in the agricultural sector. These reforms were followed by a gradual opening to the global economy, a process that accelerated in the early 1990s.

Michael Spence

Reforms aimed at increasing an economy's flexibility are always hard - and even more so at a time of weak growth - because they require eliminating protections for vested interests in the short term for the sake of greater long-term prosperity.

Michael Spence

My mother was strong-willed, demanding, and very supportive all at the same time.

Michael Spence

Developing economies may not have much control over the headwinds that they face today, but that does not mean that they are powerless. Much can be done not just to sustain moderate growth but also to secure a more prosperous and resilient future.

Michael Spence

One way to measure the size of a company, industry, or economy is to determine its output. But a better way is to determine its added value - namely, the difference between the value of its outputs, that is, the goods and services it produces, and the costs of its inputs, such as the raw materials and energy it consumes.

Michael Spence

A global economy that is levering up, while unable to generate enough aggregate demand to achieve potential growth, is on a risky path.

Michael Spence

A split between the U.S. and its traditional allies, if it becomes a permanent feature of the new global order, would lead to deeper fragmentation among the world's market-oriented democracies. That will surely shift the long-term balance of power in China's favor, as it moves steadily toward becoming the world's largest economy.

Michael Spence