Starting in July, MIT’s Shaping the Way forward for Work Initiative within the Department of Economics will usher in a big recent era of research, policy, and education of the following generation of students, made possible by a present from the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation. In recognition of the gift and the expansion of priorities it supports, on July 1 the initiative will change into a part of the brand new James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Way forward for Work. This center will likely be officially launched at a public event in fall 2025.
The Stone Center will likely be led by Daron Acemoglu, Institute Professor, and co-directors David Autor, the Daniel (1972) and Gail Rubinfeld Professor in Economics, and Simon Johnson, the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship. It’ll join a worldwide network of 11 other wealth inequality centers funded by the Stone Foundation as a part of an effort to advance research on the causes and consequences of the growing accumulation at the highest of the wealth distribution.
“This generous gift from the Stone Foundation advances our pioneering economics research on inequality, technology, and the longer term of the workforce. This work will create a pipeline of students on this critical area of study, and it is going to help to tell the general public and policymakers,” says Provost Cynthia Barnhart.
Originally established as a part of MIT Blueprint Labs with a foundational gift from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Shaping the Way forward for Work Initiative is a nonpartisan research organization that applies economics research to discover progressive ways to maneuver the labor market onto a more equitable trajectory, with a central deal with revitalizing labor market opportunities for staff with out a college education. Constructing on frontier micro- and macro-economics, economic sociology, political economy, and other disciplines, the initiative seeks to reply key questions on the decline in labor market opportunities for non-college staff in recent a long time. These labor market changes have been a significant driver of growing wealth inequality, a phenomenon that has, in turn, broadly reshaped our economy, democracy, and society.
Support from the Stone Foundation will allow the brand new Stone Center to construct on the Shaping the Way forward for Work Initiative’s ongoing research agenda and extend its focus to incorporate a growing emphasis on the interplay between technologies and inequality, in addition to the technology sector’s role in defining future inequality.
Core objectives of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Way forward for Work will include fostering connections between scholars doing pathbreaking research on automation, AI, the intersection of labor and technology, and wealth inequality across disciplines, including throughout the Department of Economics, the MIT Sloan School of Management, and the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing; strengthening the pipeline of emerging scholars focused on these issues; and using research to tell and interact a wider audience including the general public, undergraduate and graduate students, and policymakers.
The Stone Foundation’s support will allow the middle to strengthen and expand its commitments to provide recent research, convene additional events to share research findings, promote connection and collaboration between scholars working on related topics, provide recent resources for the middle’s research affiliates, and expand public outreach to lift awareness of this necessary emerging challenge. “Cathy and I are thrilled to welcome MIT to the growing family of Stone Centers dedicated to studying the urgent challenges of accelerating wealth inequality,” James M. Stone says.
Agustín Rayo, dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, says, “I’m thrilled to have fun the creation of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center within the MIT economics department. Not only will it enhance the cutting-edge work of MIT’s social scientists, but it is going to support cross-disciplinary interactions that can enable recent insights and solutions to complex social challenges.”
Jonathan Gruber, chair of the Department of Economics, adds, “I couldn’t be more excited concerning the Stone Foundation’s support for the Shaping the Way forward for Work Initiative. The initiative’s leaders have been far ahead of the curve in anticipating the rapid changes that technological forces are bringing to the labor market, and their influential studies have helped us understand the potential effects of AI and other technologies on U.S. staff. The generosity of the Stone Foundation will allow them to proceed this incredible work, while expanding their priorities to incorporate other critical issues around inequality. That is an awesome moment for the paradigm-shifting research that Acemoglu, Autor, and Johnson are leading here at MIT.”
“We’re grateful to the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation for his or her generous support enabling us to check two defining challenges of our age: inequality and the longer term of labor,” says Acemoglu, who was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory 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 fine jobs in the current and in the longer term, but additionally develop ideas about how society can shape each the work of the longer term and inequality by its decisions of institutions and technological trajectories.”
“We’re incredibly fortunate to be joining the family of Stone Centers world wide. Jim and Cathleen Stone are far-sighted and generous donors, and we’re delighted that they’re willing to back us and MIT in this fashion,” says Johnson. “We sit up for working with all our colleagues, at MIT and world wide, to advance understanding and practical approaches to inequality and the longer term of labor.”
Autor adds, “This support will enable us — and plenty of others — to focus our scholarship, teaching and public outreach towards shaping a labor market that gives opportunity, mobility, and economic security to a far broader set of individuals.”
