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Our Mission
Income and wealth inequality is recognised as one of the most critical issues of our day, yet its dynamics, causes and consequences are not fully understood. The James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Centre for the Study of Wealth Inequality was founded in 2017 to address this need and serve as the leading venue for the research and teaching of income and wealth inequality issues.
By convening an interdisciplinary team of scholars from across INSEAD, the Centre aims to generate new insights about inequality problems and harness the power of business to solve them. It connects the lab with the classroom to ignite new ideas; spur discourse and debate; shape business education; and inspire leaders to take action.
Our mission is two-fold: We’re committed to generating new insights about income and wealth inequality problems, and focused on mobilising the next generation of business leaders to solve them.
Mark Stabile
Academic Director, The James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Centre for the Study of Wealth Inequality
Professor of Economics
Stone Chaired Professor in Wealth Inequality
Our Approach
Our team strives to gain a deeper understanding of the dynamics, causes and consequences of income and wealth inequality; contribute to the intellectual debate surrounding income and wealth inequality; and educate current and future business leaders about the issues and implications of income and wealth inequality. To that end, we are focused on taking a novel approach to the study of income and wealth inequality. We examine the impact of the top of wealth and income distributions in countries and communities around the world and then transfer those insights to the INSEAD classroom. Through the creation of new courses and curriculum at INSEAD, we hope to change how MBA students think about - and potentially solve - income and wealth inequality problems.
Method

To gain a more comprehensive picture of income and wealth inequality, our research team will examine it from a number of different angles while focusing specifically on problems created by rapid growth in the income and wealth held by the top 1%. We’ll study countries and communities across the globe, drawing upon macro-level data to better understand country-specific trends while looking at micro-level data to understand what’s happening at the level of the individual. In addition to looking at the impact of income and wealth inequality on different countries’ support systems or structures, we will explore how certain countries have successfully addressed or solved problems of wealth inequality.
Drivers

We believe that tackling the problem of income and wealth inequality requires the cooperation and ingenuity of business leaders from around the globe. As a top business school with global reach, INSEAD is ideally equipped to bring this vision to reality. We have the opportunity to educate the next generation of business leaders — the individuals most likely to create or represent the top 1% of wealth holders in the future — about the challenges of income and wealth inequality and their potential role in solving them.
In The Spotlight
Events and Seminars
Ignacio Flores
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, INSEAD Stone Centre for the Study of Wealth Inequality
October 15, 2020
PhD Seminar
Abstract: The goal of this seminar is to introduce students to methodological issues in the study of income and wealth inequality. I will first present a short story of the evolution of distributional issues in economics. I will then describe some of the fundamental concepts that are used in the literature, to then cover main empirical findings on the evolution of global inequality in the last century. A particular focus will be given to the data availability and the present challenges related to the variety of imperfect sources that are used to construct estimates.
Ignacio Flores
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, INSEAD Stone Centre for the Study of Wealth Inequality
October 8, 2020
INSEAD Stone Centre Seminar
Abstract: This paper measures the relative underestimation of factor income (i.e., capital and labor) in distributive data, with respect to national accounts’ figures. I study a group of countries with harmonized surveys in the Luxembourg Income Studies database, but also tax and Distributional National Accounts (DINA) estimates, from the World Inequality Database, for the US. I find that households receive around only half of national gross capital income, as opposed to private and public corporations, and the trend decreases in most countries over 1995-2015 (panel, 19 countries). Due to heterogeneous non-response and misreporting, household-surveys only capture around 20% of this aggregate, versus 70% of labor income (sub-panel, 13 countries). This structure understates inequality estimates, which become insensitive to changes in the capital share (gross and net estimates) and its distribution. These distortions are weaker in tax data but still present, while DINA estimates are not subject to them by construction. I formalize this system in a novel theoretical framework based on accounting identities. I then use it to compute marginal effects and contributions to changes in fractile shares.
Maripier Isabelle
Postdoctoral Researcher, INSEAD Stone Centre for the Study of Wealth Inequality
April 2019
INSEAD Stone Centre Seminar
Eliana La Ferrara
Fondazione Romeo ed Enrica Invernizzi Chair in Development Economics, Bocconi University
April 3, 2019
Abstract: We test the effectiveness of an entertainment education TV series, MTV Shuga, aimed at providing information and changing attitudes and behaviors related to HIV/AIDS. Using a simple model we show that “edutainment” can work through an ‘individual’ or a ‘social’ channel. We conducted a randomized controlled trial in urban Nigeria where young viewers were exposed to MTV Shuga or to a placebo TV series. Among those exposed to MTV Shuga, we created additional variation in the ‘social messages’ they received and in the people with whom they watched the show. We find significant improvements in knowledge and attitudes towards HIV and risky sexual behavior. Treated subjects are twice as likely to get tested for HIV eight months after the intervention. We also find reductions in STDs among women. These effects are stronger for viewers who report being more involved in the narrative, consistent with the psychological underpinnings of “edutainment”. Our experimental manipulations of the social norm component did not produce significantly different results from the main treatment. The ‘individual’ effect of “edutainment” thus seems to have prevailed in the context of our study.
Brendan M. Price
Assistant Professor of Economics, University of California, Davis
March 20, 2019
Abstract: Economic activity is highly seasonal. We show how seasonal fluctuations in aggregate employment induce earnings volatility for individual workers and households. To do so, we introduce a novel measure of seasonal work interruptions premised on the idea that seasonal workers are likely to exit from employment at the same time each year. We show, in two panel datasets on US households spanning 1984-2013, that a disproportionate number of prime-age workers experience recurrent job separations spaced exactly 12 months apart. Annually recurrent separations are most common in months when aggregate employment is declining; are concentrated in industries subject to seasonal shifts in labor demand; and exhibit a negative skill gradient, especially among men. Using machine-learning tools to identify the subset of job separators most likely to experience a repeat separation 12 months later, we track the evolution of personal earnings and household income before and after probable seasonal work interruptions. Seasonal workers incur large earnings losses during the off-season. These earnings losses are (i) driven primarily by recurrent separations from the same employer; (ii) not recouped in other firms or industries; (iii) partially offset by the receipt of unemployment insurance; and (iv) exacerbated by concurrent reductions in spousal employment and earnings. On net, there is little if any offsetting of seasonal earnings losses among modern US households.
Dylan Glover
Postdoctoral Researcher, INSEAD Stone Centre for the Study of Wealth Inequality
November 2018
INSEAD Stone Centre Seminar
Ignacio Flores Beale
Postdoctoral Researcher, INSEAD Stone Centre for the Study of Wealth Inequality
October 2018
INSEAD Stone Centre Seminar
Geneva Locke, MBA July 2018
Presentated at the MBA World Summit 2018 in Cape Town, South Africa
March 2018
For more details, click here.
Anh Nguyen
PhD Candiate in Economics, Columbia University
January 17, 2018
Abstract: This paper explores the use of bundling to reduce adverse selection in insurance markets and its application to social health insurance programs. When the choice to buy health insurance is made at the household level, bundling the insurance policies of household members eliminates the effect of adverse selection within a household since the household can no longer select only sick members to enroll. However, this can exacerbate adverse selection across households, as healthier households might choose to drop out of the insurance market. The net effect of this trade-off depends on the characteristics of the household demand for medical care and risk preferences. I explore this issue using individual survey data on insurance enrollment and medical spending in Vietnam that contain detailed information about the structure of the household. The reduced-form evidence suggests that income, own-price and cross-member substitution effects play important roles in the demand for medical care, which affects a household’s selection of members into insurance. I then develop and estimate a model of household insurance bundle choice and medical utilization that accounts for these features. The results suggest that much of the adverse selection is concentrated within the household. Counterfactual analysis reveals that under optimal pricing, household bundling yields significantly higher consumer surplus and insurance enrollment than individual purchase. Furthermore, the insurance market is less susceptible to complete unraveling under household bundling.
Professor Esther Duflo
The Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
December 6, 2017
Overview: Esther Duflo research seeks to understand the economic lives of the poor with the aim to help design and evaluate social policies. In her paper Esther Duflo argues that economists should think of themselves more as plumbers who lay the pipes and fix the leaks, ready to get their hands dirty and to adjust to details when it comes to the policy implementation process. Join us for this public lecture in which Esther Dufo will speak about her vision on how economists should seriously engage with "plumbing", in the interest of both our business and our society.
Professor Esther Duflo
The Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
December 6, 2017
Abstract: In 2008, 682 secondary school scholarships were awarded by lottery among 2,064 Ghanaian students (aged 17 on average) who were admitted to a specific school and track but could not immediately enroll, in most cases due to lack of funds. We use follow-up data collected until 2016 to document downstream impacts by age 25. For the whole sample, scholarship winners were 26 percentage points (55%) more likely to complete secondary school, obtained 1.26 more years of secondary education, scored an average of 0.15 standard deviations greater on a reading and math test, and adopted more preventative health behavior. Women who received a scholarship had 0.217 fewer children by age 25. Scholarship winners were also 3 percentage points (30%) more likely to have ever enrolled in tertiary education. Despite the fact that they were 2.5 percentage points more likely to be enrolled in school at the time of the last survey, they were 5.5 percentage points (10%) more likely to have positive earnings and had significantly higher (hyperbolic sine) earnings. For students admitted to vocational tracks (comprising 60% of the sample) scholarships did not increase tertiary education, which simplifies the interpretation of labor market outcomes. In this subsample, scholarships increased the likelihood of earning money by 8.8 percentage points (16%) and increased total earnings by 19%. The estimated financial rate of return to education in this subsample is 13%. For students admitted to academic majors, scholarships increased the chance of having enrolled in tertiary education by 5.3 percentage points on a base of 11 percent. This effect is driven overwhelmingly by women, who nearly double their rate of tertiary enrollment and fully catch up with men. We cannot reject the hypothesis that among those admitted to academic tracks, scholarships did not affect average labor market participation and earnings by age 25, but since more scholarship winners than non-winners were still in school as of 2016, it is too early to definitively assess labor market impacts in this population.
MBA Elective Courses
Research insights generated by the Centre directly inform our pedagogy on the topic of income and wealth inequality at INSEAD. The current course offering is listed below.
Wealth And Income Inequality And The Future Of Business
Growing inequality is one of the biggest social, economic and political challenges of our time. Over the past two decades, an extremely small share of the population has accumulated an ever-increasing share of society’s resources. The concentration of wealth at the very top is part of a much broader rise in disparities all along the income distribution. While people at the top enjoy increasing income and employment opportunities, the middle class face narrowing employment options and stagnating incomes. At the same time, emerging markets have captured an ever-increasing portion of global income. Understanding the causes and implications of these changes for both society and for business will be the focus of this course.
Business and Society: Business and Public Policy
This course focuses on public policy issues that affect all of society and what we (businesses, government, individuals) should be aware of to understand our influence on them. It examines this broader environment from the perspective of the firm through both case studies and through the lens of how businesses can be most competitive in environments where these issues can be a constraint but also an opportunity. Understanding how businesses should react to or affect major policy issues will affect their ability to perform and create value, not only for its shareholders but for society as well.
Power and Politics
Power is one of the most fundamental concepts in the social sciences. From philosophers, to politicians, to even comic book writers, people have observed that regardless of whether you have a desire or disdain for it, power plays a pivotal role in societies and organizations. The purpose of this course is to help you (i) understand, (ii) analyze, and (iii) harness power. Both anecdotal evidence and decades of research have shown that power can dramatically impact the way we think, feel and behave—in ways we do not expect. This course will illuminate the interpersonal, psychophysiological, and interpersonal effects of power. You will learn practical and useful political skills that will help you navigate and manage power dynamics in organisations.
Meet our Team

Morten Bennedsen
Professor of Economics and Political Science
The André and Rosalie Hoffmann Chaired Professor of Family Enterprise

Ilian Mihov
Dean of INSEAD
Professor of Economics
The Rausing Chaired Professor of Economic and Business Transformation
INSEAD activities in the field of wealth inequality were initiated thanks to a founding contribution from James M. and Cathleen D. Stone. Their support inspires and empowers INSEAD faculty, students and alumni around the globe, and is gratefully acknowledged.