Wages, Productivity, and Power —How Labor Markets Shape Inequality

Over recent decades, wage growth has failed to keep pace with the country’s broader economic gains. Many workers have not seen their pay rise alongside productivity, while a select few have captured a growing share of income through rising executive compensation and returns to shareholders. Are these outcomes driven by market forces, institutional choices, or both? And how can the gap between the wage floor and the income ceiling be bridged to build a labor market that works not just for those at the top?

Join us for a conversation on these questions with economist Arin Dube, whose research has helped shape the debate on minimum wage policy, labor market competition and wage-setting power, and the role firms play in driving inequality.

Dube will be joined by Steven Durlauf, founding director of the Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility, and Marianne Bertrand, Stone Center advisor and economist at Chicago Booth.

Durlauf, whose work explores economic growth and intergenerational mobility, will deliver insights into how economic structures and labor market institutions permit or restrict mobility. Bertrand, whose research spans labor economics, corporate finance, political economy, will illuminate how employer discretion and decision-making shape unequal outcomes.

The conversation will be moderated by Damon Jones, Associate Director of the Stone Center, whose research in public finance, household finance, and labor economics examines how income inequality shapes economic and social outcomes.

This event is an opportunity to engage with pressing questions about the institutional, market, and policy forces that shape income inequality—and what it would take to ensure the benefits of economic growth are more widely shared.

Schedule