Stone Centre for the Study of Wealth Inequality

July 2026 - 30th Annual SIOE Conference

The Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics (SIOE) held its annual conference at INSEAD, on the Europe campus.

Keynote speakers:

• Ekaterina Zhuravskaya (Paris School of Economics): The rise of mobile broadband and the fall of incumbency advantage
• Mattia Fochesato (Bocconi) : Institutions, Technology, and Enduring Economic Inequality in the Long Run

Presidential address:

• Pauline Grosjean (UNSW) : Conflict, Gender Norms, and Households
   

The conference illustrated SIOE's interdisciplinary approach, bringing together insights from economics, sociology, political science and anthropology to better understand the institutions that shape our societies.

July 2026 - Pre-market writing and presentation course with Karen Bernhardt-Walther

The INSEAD Stone Centre invited Karen Bernhardt-Walther, from York University, to run a 2-day workshop with our Postdoctoral researchers. The aim was helping economists\management scholars sharpen how they present, frame, and communicate their work before going on the job market. 
Karen provided invaluable feedback on pitching one's work, preparing the job market package, developing an elevator pitch, learning how to convince an audience, and answering hard questions.

Apr 2026 - Stone Centre Research Seminar Marathon

The Stone Centre organized an internal research workshop bringing together faculty from across INSEAD to share and discuss research related, directly or indirectly, to issues of wealth and economic inequality.

• The Psychology of Social Inequality - Andy Yap
• Collective Representations of Inequality - Asher Lawson
• Skills in Space - Alessandro Sforza
• Market Forces in Academia: Returns to Education and Faculty Pay - Boris Vallée

Mar 2026 - Mind the Cap? The Effects of Regulating Bankers’ Pay - Maddalena Ronchi, Kellogg

This paper examines the labor market consequences of regulating incentive pay, exploiting the introduction of the Dutch bonus cap as a sector-wide constraint on variable compensation in banking. Using registry employer–employee data with detailed information on fixed and variable pay and complete employment histories, we estimate a difference-in-differences design comparing banks to other financial institutions, complemented by within-bank variation in pre-reform exposure to the cap. We find that the reform led to a sharp decline in variable pay that was only partially offset by increases in fixed pay, resulting in lower total compensation for incumbent workers. The adjustment is consistent with a compensating differential arising from reduced pay risk and is substantially larger for high-talent employees. While the policy increased involuntary separations and early retirement, voluntary separations remained unchanged, suggesting a sector-wide adjustment of incumbents’ outside options in response to the shock. In contrast, hiring fell markedly, particularly from abroad and from the upper end of the prior earnings distribution, indicating reduced ability of banks to attract top talent. Taken together, the results show that bonus caps reduce pay dispersion within firms but may impair talent acquisition, while suggesting that a broader policy coverage can attenuate these costs thanks to its diffused impact on outside options

Mar 2026 - Estimating Peerage Effects: Aristocratic Connections and Political Careers since 1830 - Valentino Larcinese, LSE

Are political careers facilitated by family networks? We address this question using a novel dataset assembled from various sources and combining information on the political careers of British MPs with information about the family trees of the British aristocracy. Our data span almost two centuries (1831-2023) and document the evolution over time of the background of British MPs, their social origin (in particular whether aristocratic or not), education (university and school attended), profession and political experience. Using information on family trees we measure MPs' distances from relatives with nobility titles and their centrality in the aristocratic network. We use these indicators to assess the role of aristocratic ancestry and connections in determining election and career progression. These indicators, calculated at birth, explain a large part of an early start advantage, i.e. the lower age of entry into the House of Commons. Progression into the Cabinet is also facilitated by aristocratic connections, both directly and indirectly, via longer experience (in years) accumulated in parliament due to the early start advantage. This career advantage is smaller for access to the Cabinet than for entry into the House of Commons. We also show how the decline of the aristocracy in British politics is mostly due to its decline as a source of political personnel for the Conservative party.

Jan 2026 - Making Help Visible: Experimental Evidence from a Recognition Program in the Workplace - Silvia Castro

Organizations rely on employees helping each other, yet meaningful peer support is difficult to observe and therefore challenging to incentivize. This study evaluates a public recognition incentive designed to promote peer support in Uganda’s second largest bank. Using a cluster randomized controlled trial, we introduce an award for employees identified by peers and supervisors as particularly supportive. The intervention increases willingness to help by 21% in expertise sharing and by 12% in mentoring. Evidence suggests that these effects operate through improvements in professional reputation and career concerns. A replication in a second bank yields similar effects, supporting the external validity of the findings.

Nov 2025 - Homelessness and Labor Market Dynamics - Johanna Roth

Homelessness is rising across many developed countries, making it a central topic in policy debates. Yet, the lack of high-quality data means we still know little about its causes and consequences, limiting the design of effective policies. This project examines the link between labor markets and homelessness by constructing a novel dataset that allows me to reconstruct the labor-market trajectories of individuals who experience homelessness. I first present stylized facts on the employment dynamics of this population. I then show preliminary evidence that the risk of homelessness increases sharply following a mass layoff and remains elevated for several years.

Nov 2025 - Stigma and Discrimination: Evidence from a Menstrual Awareness Campaign in Nepal - Silvia Castro

Around the world, efforts to promote gender equality and inclusion increasingly face political and social backlash. We study whether well-intentioned empowerment programs can unintentionally fuel resistance among those who are left out. Focusing on menstrual stigma in Nepal, we conduct a large-scale field experiment in 52 mixed-gender schools with 4,300 students. Schools were randomly assigned to one of three groups: (i) no intervention, (ii) a menstrual health awareness session delivered only to girls, or (iii) the same session delivered jointly to girls and boys. The program improves factual knowledge about menstruation in both treatment arms. However, we document significant backlash effects: when boys are excluded from the sessions, they become less compassionate and less willing to sign a pledge to stand up against menstrual stigma compared to the control group. Including boys, however, does not appear to improve outcomes overall. Our findings show that programs aimed at empowering stigmatized groups can generate unintended negative consequences.

Oct 2025 - Diversity and/or Inclusion? Evidence from Disability Quota and Inclusion Laws in Brazil - Thomaz Teodorovicz, CBS

How do quota laws and nondiscrimination mandates jointly shape organizational diversity and inclusion? This question is critical for policymakers, who often design quotas to expand representation without anticipating unintended consequences for workplace equality. We address it by studying the Brazilian labor market for people with disabilities (PwD), where a 2012 reform strengthened enforcement of a long-standing quota law and a 2015 Inclusion Law expanded protections against discrimination. Using rich matched employer–employee data, we show that stricter enforcement spurred significant increases in PwD hiring, particularly among previously noncompliant firms. Yet these gains in representation came with uneven effects on inclusion: job security for incumbent PwD improved, but relative wage gaps widened and career progression slowed, especially in firms that were not previously meeting their quota targets. Newly hired PwD also entered on less favorable terms, although evidence suggests it reflects an expansion of the labor pool to hire workers with more disadvantaged profiles. Our study advances understanding of diversity policies by demonstrating how sequential institutional changes can increase representation while simultaneously entrenching inequalities, underscoring the need to evaluate diversity and inclusion as interconnected but distinct policy goals.

Jul 2025 - INSEAD Stone Centre End-of-Year Workshop

We recently brought together postdocs and researchers for an end-of-year workshop to share early-stage ideas/ongoing projects, get feedback, and support each other’s work in progress. Here are some projects we discussed:

• Linking rising income gaps between generations across countries to long-term trends in education, growth, and demographics, to show that popular measures of (labour) earning gaps underestimate the phenomenon.
• Limitations to workers’ spatial mobility reduce access to productive jobs, misallocating labour across space and firms. The effectiveness of a policy depends on which firms are more sensitive to changes in local conditions.
• Building on research on the "motherhood penalty," this project explores whether first childbirth leads to a "double penalty" for mothers by examining both impact on employment and earnings and self-reported well-being for mothers and fathers.
• Using tax and infrastructure data to study how better road access affects trade
  patterns across firms.

Jun 2025 - The Role of Property Assessment Oversight in School Finance Inequality - Erin Troland, Federal Reserve Board

Erin Troland's research explores how inaccuracies in property tax assessments contribute to funding gaps between school districts — a vital but often overlooked issue in U.S. education finance. Leveraging a natural experiment and a difference-in-differences approach, Erin and her co-authors demonstrate that state oversight of property assessments can reduce funding inequality, increase local revenues, and improve equity across districts.