Beginning in July, MIT’s Shaping the Way forward for Work Initiative within the Division of Economics will usher in a major new period of analysis, coverage, and schooling of the subsequent technology of students, made potential by a present from the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Basis. In recognition of the present and the growth of priorities it helps, on July 1 the initiative will develop into a part of the brand new James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Middle on Inequality and Shaping the Way forward for Work. This heart might be formally launched at a public occasion in fall 2025.
The Stone Middle might be led by Daron AcemogluInstitute Professor, and co-directors David writerthe Daniel (1972) and Gail Rubinfeld Professor in Economics, and Simon Johnsonthe Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship. It’s going to be a part of a world community of 11 different wealth inequality facilities funded by the Stone Basis as a part of an effort to advance analysis on the causes and penalties of the rising accumulation on the prime of the wealth distribution.
“This beneficiant present from the Stone Basis advances our pioneering economics analysis on inequality, know-how, and the way forward for the workforce. This work will create a pipeline of students on this important space of examine, and it’ll assist to tell the general public and policymakers,” says Provost Cynthia Barnhart.
Initially established as a part of MIT Blueprint Labs with a foundational present from the William and Flora Hewlett Basis, the Shaping the Way forward for Work Initiative is a nonpartisan analysis group that applies economics analysis to determine revolutionary methods to maneuver the labor market onto a extra equitable trajectory, with a central give attention to revitalizing labor market alternatives for employees with out a school schooling. Constructing on frontier micro- and macro-economics, financial sociology, political financial system, and different disciplines, the initiative seeks to reply key questions concerning the decline in labor market alternatives for non-college employees in current a long time. These labor market modifications have been a significant driver of rising wealth inequality, a phenomenon that has, in flip, broadly reshaped our financial system, democracy, and society.
Help from the Stone Basis will permit the brand new Stone Middle to construct on the Shaping the Way forward for Work Initiative’s ongoing analysis agenda and prolong its focus to incorporate a rising emphasis on the interaction between applied sciences and inequality, in addition to the know-how sector’s function in defining future inequality.
Core targets of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Middle on Inequality and Shaping the Way forward for Work will embody fostering connections between students doing pathbreaking analysis on automation, AI, the intersection of labor and know-how, and wealth inequality throughout disciplines, together with throughout the Division of Economics, the MIT Sloan Faculty of Administration, and the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman Faculty of Computing; strengthening the pipeline of rising students centered on these points; and utilizing analysis to tell and interact a wider viewers together with the general public, undergraduate and graduate college students, and policymakers.
The Stone Basis’s assist will permit the middle to strengthen and increase its commitments to provide new analysis, convene further occasions to share analysis findings, promote connection and collaboration between students engaged on associated subjects, present new assets for the middle’s analysis associates, and increase public outreach to lift consciousness of this necessary rising problem. “Cathy and I are thrilled to welcome MIT to the rising household of Stone Facilities devoted to learning the pressing challenges of accelerating wealth inequality,” James M. Stone says.
Agustín Rayo, dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, says, “I’m thrilled to have a good time the creation of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Middle within the MIT economics division. Not solely will it improve the cutting-edge work of MIT’s social scientists, however it should assist cross-disciplinary interactions that may allow new insights and options to advanced social challenges.”
Jonathan Gruber, chair of the Division of Economics, provides, “I couldn’t be extra excited concerning the Stone Basis’s assist for the Shaping the Way forward for Work Initiative. The initiative’s leaders have been far forward of the curve in anticipating the fast modifications that technological forces are bringing to the labor market, and their influential research have helped us perceive the potential results of AI and different applied sciences on U.S. employees. The generosity of the Stone Basis will permit them to proceed this unimaginable work, whereas increasing their priorities to incorporate different important points round inequality. It is a nice second for the paradigm-shifting analysis that Acemoglu, Autor, and Johnson are main right here at MIT.”
“We’re grateful to the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Basis for his or her beneficiant assist enabling us to review two defining challenges of our age: inequality and the way forward for work,” says Acemoglu, who was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Financial Sciences in Reminiscence of Alfred Nobel in 2024 (with co-laureates Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson). “We hope to transcend exploring the causes of inequality and the determinants of the supply of excellent jobs within the current and sooner or later, but additionally develop concepts about how society can form each the work of the long run and inequality by its selections of establishments and technological trajectories.”
“We’re extremely lucky to be becoming a member of the household of Stone Facilities around the globe. Jim and Cathleen Stone are far-sighted and beneficiant donors, and we’re delighted that they’re prepared to again us and MIT on this manner,” says Johnson. “We sit up for working with all our colleagues, at MIT and around the globe, to advance understanding and sensible approaches to inequality and the way forward for work.”
Autor provides, “This assist will allow us — and lots of others — to focus our scholarship, educating and public outreach in the direction of shaping a labor market that gives alternative, mobility, and financial safety to a far broader set of individuals.”
