We analyze the forces that contribute to growing income and wealth inequality through the erosion of job quality and labor market opportunities for workers without a college degree. We identify innovative ways to move the economy onto a more equitable trajectory.
Meet the TeamAbout Us
The James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work is a non-partisan research organization that applies economics research to identify innovative ways to move the labor market onto a more equitable trajectory.
The center’s focus is revitalizing the labor market’s role in generating well-remunerated, high-quality jobs that offer broadly shared prosperity to workers with diverse skills. Achieving those objectives requires shaping the technologies and institutions that determine the value of skills and the distribution of income and wealth, both between labor and capital, and among workers across the occupational spectrum. Our scholarship builds on frontier micro- and macroeconomics, economic sociology, political economy, and other disciplines to analyze, interpret, and shape the future of work, technology, and inequality.
What We Do
Research
We seek to advance policy-relevant economics research that answers key questions about the decline in labor market opportunities for workers who do not have four-year degrees and the effect of this decline on growing wealth inequality. We are currently focused on four main themes.
What We Do
Inform policymakers and the public
We use research to identify innovative options that policymakers, the private sector, and civil society can use to move our economy onto a more equitable trajectory. We help to translate research into practice by convening students, scholars, policymakers, and practitioners who are shaping the future of work.
What We Do
Develop curricula and create opportunities for emerging scholars
We work to fortify and diversify the pipeline of emerging scholars who produce policy-relevant research relating to our core themes. We also develop curricula and teach courses at MIT.
Related Initiatives
The Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work builds on a long history of research and outreach at MIT, including several major efforts which have helped inspire and inform the development of the Stone Center, formerly the MIT Shaping the Future of Work Initiative.
Through its faculty leadership and affiliates program, the center will remain engaged with these ongoing efforts at MIT, bringing together a wider interdisciplinary community devoted to cutting-edge research.
MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future
From 2018 to 2020, an MIT Task Force co-chaired by Professors David Autor (who now co-directs the MIT Shaping the Future of Work Initiative), and David Mindell and Executive Director Dr. Elisabeth Reynolds sought to understand the relationships between emerging technologies and work, to help shape public discourse around realistic expectations of technology, and to explore strategies to enable a future of shared prosperity. It examined a range of issues including how emerging technologies are transforming the nature of human work and the skillsets that will enable humans to thrive in the digital economy; how to catalyze technological innovation in order to augment human potential; and how our civic institutions can ensure that the gains from these emerging innovations contribute to equality of opportunity, social inclusion, and shared prosperity. It produced a range of reports and research briefs.
Read The Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines
MIT Industrial Performance Center – Work of the Future Initiative
Task Force member Professor Julie Shah and Dr. Ben Armstrong have continued to pursue related research as part of MIT’s Industrial Performance Center, located in the School of Engineering. Their Work of the Future activities include an Automation Clinic focused on the relationship between technologies and work in manufacturing, and an industry working group on Generative AI and the Work of the Future.
Learn about ongoing activities at the MIT Work of the Future in the Industrial Performance Center
MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research (IWER)
IWER, located at the MIT Sloan School of Management, is a multidisciplinary research and teaching unit that conducts and disseminates cutting-edge research to guide managers in crafting a successful and inclusive future of work in order to improve the lives of workers and their loved ones. IWER has long played a leading role in influencing scholarship and practice related to work, labor and employment relations, diversity in the workplace, technology and analytics, and larger questions of inequality.
Now co-directed by MIT Sloan Professors Emilio J. Castilla and Erin L. Kelly, IWER includes faculty affiliated with MIT Sloan and a range of other parts of MIT, including the Department of Economics, Political Science, and Urban Studies and Planning. IWER’s areas of focus include a weekly research seminar, a rigorous and interdisciplinary PhD program, and research projects. Learn more about IWER’s mission, current IWER faculty projects, and Good Jobs Resources.
Shaping Work of the Future
MIT Sloan Professor Thomas A. Kochan has led a series of initiatives at MIT over the last decade, with a focus on calling attention to the need for a new social contract at work and for engaging workers in current and future technological changes to build a more inclusive economy and broadly shared prosperity. Among other areas of work, Kochan has taught an MITx online course on Shaping Work of the Future and published the book Shaping the Future of Work: A Handbook for Action and a New Social Contract jointly with Lee Dyer.
Learn more about the Shaping Work of the Future online course
Meet the Team
Leadership
Daron Acemoglu
Faculty Director
Labor Market Consequences of Technological Change · Determinants of Income and Wealth Inequality · Effects of Globalization on Incomes, Innovation, and Growth · Applying AI to Extend Worker Expertise
Daron Acemoglu
Simon Johnson
Faculty Co-Director
Determinants of Income and Wealth Inequality · Applying AI to Extend Worker Expertise · Labor Market Consequences of Technological Change · Effects of Globalization on Incomes, Innovation, and Growth
Simon Johnson
David Autor
Faculty Co-Director
Effects of Globalization on Incomes, Innovation, and Growth · Determinants of Income and Wealth Inequality · Labor Market Consequences of Technological Change · Applying AI to Extend Worker Expertise
David AutorStaff
Research Affiliates
Sydnee Caldwell
Research Affiliate, Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and Department of Economics
David Dorn
Research Affiliate, Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
UBS Foundation Professor of Globalization and Labor Markets, University of Zurich
Arindrajit Dube
Research Affiliate, Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
Provost Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Effects of Globalization on Incomes, Innovation, and Growth
Arindrajit Dube
Brandon Enriquez
Research Affiliate, Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
Postdoctoral Fellow, National Bureau of Economics Research
Alex He
Research Affiliate, Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
Assistant Professor of Finance at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland
Effects of Globalization on Incomes, Innovation, and Growth
Alex He
Nathaniel Hendren
Research Affiliate, Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
Professor of Economics, MIT
Simon Jäger
Research Affiliate, Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
Associate Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Princeton University
Sendhil Mullainathan
Research Affiliate, Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
Professor, Dual Appointment in Economics and EECS, MIT
Christina Patterson
Research Affiliate, Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
Associate Professor at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business
Pascual Restrepo
Research Affiliate, Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
Associate Professor of Economics, Yale University
Nina Rousille
Research Affiliate, Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
Assistant Professor, MIT Department of Economics; Executive Director, Hub for Equal Representation, LSE
Anna Salomons
Research Affiliate, Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
Instituut Gak Endowed Professor, Utrecht University’s School of Economics
Labor Market Consequences of Technological Change
Anna Salomons
Lawrence Schmidt
Research Affiliate, Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
Victor J. Menezes (1972) Career Development Assistant Professor of Finance, MIT Sloan
Anna Stansbury
Research Affiliate, Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
Class of 1948 Career Development Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor of Work and Organization Studies, MIT Sloan School of Management
Kathleen Thelen
Research Affiliate, Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
Ford Professor of Political Science, MIT
John Van Reenen
Research Affiliate, Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work (on leave)
Ronald Coase School Professor at the London School of Economics; Digital Fellow, Initiative for the Digital Economy at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT)
Determinants of Income and Wealth Inequality · Effects of Globalization on Incomes, Innovation, and Growth
John Van Reenen
Martina Viarengo
Research Affiliate, Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
Professor, Department of Economics, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies of Geneva
Nathan Wilmers
Research Affiliate, Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
Sarofim Family Career Development Associate Professor of Work and Organizations, MIT Sloan
Alumni
Caroline Chin
PhD in Economics
MIT
Brenda Wu
PhD in Business Economics
Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis
Juanita Jaramillo
PhD in Economics and Public Policy
University of Michigan
Austin Lenstch
PhD in Public Policy/Economics
Harvard Kennedy School
Work With Us
Curious about what it’s like to work with the Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work? Learn more about how to join our team.