Publications

SSRN

Read Now

July 2020
Article

Higher Economic Inequality Intensifies the Financial Hardship of People Living in Poverty by Fraying the Community Buffer

By: Jon M. Jachimowicz, Barnabas Szaszi, Marcel Lukas, David Smerdon, Jaideep Prabhu and Elke U. Weber

The current research investigates whether higher economic inequality disproportionately intensifies the financial hardship of low-income individuals. We propose that higher economic inequality increases financial hardship for low-income individuals by reducing their... View Details

Keywords: Economic Inequalty; Economy; Income; Equality and Inequality; Poverty; Civil Society or Community

October 2018
Article

A Theory of Intergenerational Mobility

By: Gary Becker, Scott Duke Kominers, Kevin Murphy and Jorg L. Spenkuch

We develop a model of intergenerational resource transmission that emphasizes the link between cross-sectional inequality and intergenerational mobility. By drawing on first principles of human capital theory, we derive several novel results. In particular, we show... View Details

Keywords: Intergenerational Mobility; Inequality; Complementarities; Equality and Inequality; Human Capital; Income; Family and Family Relationships

November 2012
Case

Occupy Wall Street

By: Rakesh Khurana and Eric Baldwin

This case examines the Occupy Wall Street movement, which emerged in late 2011 in response to the fallout from the global financial crisis of 2008 and the economic downturn that followed. Occupy Wall Street was born out of a sense of frustration with both a global... View Details

Keywords: Occupy Wall Street; Organizational Behavior; Income Inequality; Democracy; Financial Crisis; Campaign Finance; Globalization; Globalized Economies and Regions; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture

Educators

January 2020
Article

Rethinking Measurement of Pay Disparity and Its Relation to Firm Performance

By: Ethan Rouen

I develop measures of firm-level pay disparity and examine their relation to firm performance. Using comprehensive compensation data for a large sample of firms, I find no statistically significant relation between the ratio of CEO-to-mean employee compensation and... View Details

Keywords: Pay Disparity; Pay Ratio; CEO Pay Ratio; Income Inequality; Executive Compensation; Employees; Wages; Equality and Inequality; Business Ventures; Performance

02 Jun 2021
Research & Ideas

A Rare Find in Health Care: A Simple Solution to Racial Inequity

George Floyd’s murder last year forced many people to recognize the systemic racism that pervades American institutions, from law enforcement to health care. Even so, identifying those inequities is different than fixing them. “I don’t... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health

25 Mar 2024
Blog Post

DC Alumni and BEI Present Talk on Inequality and Climate Change

Society, and Audrey Choi (MBA 2004), the Former Chief Sustainability Officer at Morgan Stanley. The chat, titled Inequality and Climate Change: Implications for Business Policy and Action, attracted 85 alumni and guests to the University... View Details

21 Mar 2024
News

OC Alumni Get Clarity on AI; Inequality and Climate Change Explored in DC

Clubs News Clubs News Demystifying AI at Orange County Leadership Breakfast At its first HBS Leadership Breakfast event since before the pandemic, the HBS Association of Orange County (HBSAOC) tackled the potential of AI with a talk titled The Dawning of Artificial... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley

September 2020
Teaching Note

Miami's Tech Future (C): Reaching Another Miami

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Joyce J. Kim

The effects of Miami’s startup scene have not reached many “left-behind” lower-income Black communities, which are disproportionately affected by problems such as segregation and racial discrimination, lack of transportation access, crime, education quality, government... View Details

01 Jun 2011
News

America the Unequal

recent nationwide survey, my colleague Dan Ariely and I found that Americans drastically underestimated the level of wealth inequality in the United States, currently at levels not seen since the 1920s — just before the Great Depression.... View Details

Keywords: income disparity; class mobility

November 2017 (Revised September 2020)
Supplement

Miami's Tech Future (C): Reaching Another Miami

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter

The effects of Miami’s startup scene have not reached many “left-behind” lower-income Black communities, which are disproportionately affected by problems such as segregation and racial discrimination, lack of transportation access, crime, education quality, government... View Details

Article

How Much (More) Should CEOs Make? A Universal Desire for More Equal Pay

By: Sorapop Kiatpongsan and Michael I. Norton

Do people from different countries and different backgrounds have similar preferences for how much more the rich should earn than the poor? Using survey data from 40 countries (N = 55,238), we compare respondents' estimates of the wages of people in different... View Details

Keywords: Inequality; Justice; Wage; Cross-cultural; Wages; Equality and Inequality; Fairness; Income; Employees; Management Teams; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues

Read Now

2014
Working Paper

Islam, Inequality, and Pre-Industrial Comparative Development

By: Stelios Michalopoulos, Alireza Naghavi and Giovanni Prarolo

This study explores the interaction between trade and geography in shaping the Islamic economic doctrine and in turn the comparative development of the Muslim world. We build a model where an unequal distribution of land quality in presence of trade opportunities... View Details

Keywords: Islam; Inequality In Land Quality; Wealth Accumulation; Public Good Investment; Conflict; Wealth; Geography; Religion; Trade

Read Now

July 2017 (Revised March 2019)
Technical Note

The Future of Mobility: Economic, Environmental, and Social Implications

By: George Serafeim and David Freiberg

This technical note explores how advancements in technology are fundamentally transforming how consumers interact with mobility. Transformation is being driven by three independent trends: the emergence of affordable electric vehicles, the development of autonomous... View Details

Keywords: Oil ＆ Gas; Automobile Manufacturing; Technological And Scientific Innovation; Mobility; Inequality; Electric Vehicles; Ride-sharing; Ambidexterity; Transformation; Disruption; Change; Technological Innovation; Transportation; Equality and Inequality; Auto Industry; Technology Industry; Transportation Industry; Distribution Industry

Educators

01 Dec 2020
What Do You Think?

How Can We Get Companies to Invest More in Low-Wage Workers?

assess how technology, such as robots and artificial intelligence, impacts work and workers. One conclusion was that technology would change the nature of work, but still leave us with more demand for workers than supply. Inequality in... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

01 Jun 2020
Working Paper Summaries

Spreading the Health: Americans' Estimated and Ideal Distributions of Death and Health(care)

Keywords: by Sorapop Kiatpongsan and Michael I. Norton; Health

13 Feb 2014
HBS Seminar

David Moss, Harvard Business School

May 2015
Teaching Note

The United Kingdom and the Means to Prosperity

By: Laura Alfaro, Lakshmi Iyer and Hilary White

After struggling through the country's longest recession since 2008, the U.K. was expected to grow faster than any other G7 nation in 2014. Analysts wondered whether the return to growth was because, or in spite of, Prime Minister David Cameron's controversial £113... View Details