User:Damon Stone/sandbox

Overview
The James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility at the University of Chicago is the university's only research center dedicated to the study of inequality. The Stone Center operates as a hub for collaboration, interdisciplinary research, and debate on all dimensions of inequality.

The Stone Center was established in September of 2022 through a generous gift made by the Stone Foundation. It bears the name of the foundation's President Cathleen D. Stone and Chairman James M. Stone. The Stone Center is housed in The Harris School of Public Policy's Keller Center.

Mission and Strategic Approach
The center's mission is to advance groundbreaking, interdisciplinary research on the origins and nature of contemporary inequality. The mission of the Stone Center is realized through three strategic fronts.


 * Methodological Advancement: The Center strives to bolster scientific research by developing rigorous methodological tools for measuring inequality and intergenerational mobility.


 * Interdisciplinary Collaboration: By building an extensive international network of researchers and institutions, the Stone Center encourages interdisciplinary collaboration. This network results in joint, multi-year research projects spanning various domains.


 * Support for Emerging Scholars: The Center supports emerging scholars by providing them with opportunities and resources to embark on innovative research, thus invigorating the study of inequality.



Leadership
The Stone Center is under the leadership of distinguished scholars from the University of Chicago:


 * Director: Steven N. Durlauf is a leading scholar in inequality research.  He is the founding Director of the University of Chicago’s Stone Center and the Steans Professor in Educational Policy at the Harris School of Public Policy.  He is known for integrating sociological ideas into economic theories of inequality, poverty, and intergenerational mobility as well as for research that elucidates how statistical analysis can reveal the mechanisms underlying various dimensions of inequality.


 * Associate Director: Damon Jones is an expert empiricist whose research focuses on the effects of social programs and tax policy on household finances and outcomes. He is an Associate Director of the Stone Center and an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.  Prior to joining the leadership of the Stone Center in 2022, Jones served a year-long term as a Senior Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers where he focused on social insurance, racial equity, tax policy, and federal contracting.
 * Associate Director: Geoffrey T. Wodtke is an Associate Director of the Stone Center and an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago Department of Sociology. As a sociologist and statistician, his scholarship focuses broadly on the social, economic, and ideational processes that generate and legitimize inequalities in human development. His current research examines how neighborhood, racial, and class inequalities in early skill formation are linked with disparate exposures to environmental health hazards, such as neurotoxic air pollution and leaded paint.
 * Executive Director: Grace O. Hammond is the inaugural Executive Director of the Stone Center, where she fosters a vibrant network of researchers working to address socioeconomic inequality. Since 2010, she has enhanced economics research initiatives at the University of Chicago. Grace served for five years as the Director of Operations of the Center for the Economics of Human Development (CEHD), directed by Nobel laureate economist James Heckman, where she advanced research on the science behind skill development by establishing operational standards and strategic direction. Grace also spent six years as the Associate Director of Operations, Programs, and Finance at the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics (BFI), led by Nobel laureate economist Lars Peter Hansen, where she administered the resources of a leading consortium of scholars working to generate vanguard economics research.

Research Agenda
The Stone Center boasts a talented core research body, including three faculty directors, a research associate, and two postdoctoral scholars. Their research spans a wide range of topics related to wealth inequality and intergenerational mobility:


 * Neighborhoods: Inequality and Intergenerational Mobility

An enduring feature of American society is that the neighborhoods where children grow up play a significant role in determining their later-life socioeconomic status. What explains this phenomenon, what are the appropriate tools for measuring neighborhood effects, and what are its implications on social mobility across generations? Steven Durlauf has made substantive contributions in developing theories to explain inequality across neighborhoods and methodologies for measuring their effects on children and social mobility. His theoretical work demonstrates that higher-income parents are incentivized to segregate into neighborhoods with better-funded schools and resources, leading to disparities in child outcomes. He further demonstrates that neighborhood segregation can persist for the foreseeable future without policy interventions and that this inequality can diminish social mobility across generations in America. Furthermore, Geoff Wodtke's research adds depth to this topic by exploring how neighborhood, racial, and class inequalities in early skill formation are linked with disparate exposures to environmental health hazards, such as neurotoxic air pollution and leaded paint. This multi-faceted approach provides valuable insights into the complex interplay of factors contributing to neighborhood-based inequalities and their lasting effects.


 * Human Capital Development and Educational Policies

Human capital development has long been highlighted by scholars to be among the key factors contributing to economic growth. Steven Durlauf’s work has distinctly enriched existing literature on this topic. One example of his research is his most recent paper (2023), where Durlauf and co-authors proposed a novel methodological approach for studying intergenerational mobility using income trajectories. Employing the panel data from the US, they found that parental incomes in middle childhood and adolescence have more significant marginal effects on a child’s outcomes than incomes in early childhood. This result could help inform policymakers on how to most effectively allocate public investments for our children. Another policy-relevant example of Durlauf’s research is his study comparing meritocratic and affirmative action admission policies to public universities. His main results suggest that (a) meritocratic admissions are not necessarily efficient and (b) affirmative action policies may be efficiency-enhancing relative to meritocratic ones. He concludes that a presumption for equality-enhancing policies leads to support for affirmative action.

Supporting Research Staff

The Center's supporting research staff includes Aleksandra Lukina, Neil Cholli, and Kristina Butaeva, who contribute their expertise and passion to further the Center's research endeavors.

Academic Programming
The Stone Center's academic programming encompasses a range of initiatives designed to address inequality through collaborative and interdisciplinary engagement at all levels of scholarship. For students and early-career faculty the Stone Center organizes summer schools, The Inequality Working Group, awards thesis and dissertation prizes, as well as mentored positions. For more experienced faculty, the center hosts academic conferences, workshops, collaborative visits, and The Inequality Podcast.


 * Summer Schools on Socioeconomic Opportunity & Inequality: Summer schools provide the next generation of scholars with the multidisciplinary underpinning necessary for effective research on inequality dynamics. These summer schools are hosted internationally with partner institutions across the globe. They feature leading scholars tackling inequality research from the lens of economics, sociology, and public policy to foster cross-disciplinary approaches to inequality research and public policy evaluation regarding long-term inequality issues. They engage advanced Ph.D. students and early-career faculty through immersive lectures on state-of-the-art methods for inequality research, one-on-one and small-group meetings with senior researchers, and poster sessions where summer school students receive input on their early-stage research from the research community.
 * The Inequality Working Group: This event is a weekly seminar for University of Chicago students and faculty dedicated to fostering discussion and collaborative research among early career researchers. The working group serves as a teaching and learning opportunity for faculty, researchers, and students who engage with ongoing research. The working group encourages postdoctoral and PhD level researchers to invite assistance from master’s students on challenging research projects.  It also empowers master’s students to seek mentorship, thereby developing meaningful collaborative relationships.
 * Dissertation and Thesis Awards: The Stone Center Dissertation/Thesis Award recognizes exceptional graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Chicago who produce exemplary research on topics of inequality in the United States or cross-culturally comparative contexts. Open to students in the social sciences and public policy, this award aims to create early-stage pathways into the study of inequality.
 * Mentored Positions:
 * Academic Conferences: The Stone Center is working to improve the ways we measure and address the patterns, causes, and consequences of socioeconomic inequality by bringing together researchers across disciplines to build and work from a common toolkit. By bridging scholarly approaches to inequality, we are better able to mitigate wealth disparities and barriers to mobility.
 * Workshops: The workshop is designed as a forum for University of Chicago faculty members and advanced graduate students to learn about and discuss cutting-edge research on inequality. The program will include the latest research from leading faculty on topics, including income inequality, wealth inequality, health disparities, racial and gender inequality, social mobility, segregation, and spatial inequality.
 * Collaborative Visits:
 * The Inequality Podcast: Launched in June 2023, The Inequality Podcast features engaging discussions with leading voices in economics, political science, psychology, and sociology, bringing pioneering research on inequality to a broader audience.

The Center sponsors academic conferences, workshops, and a graduate-level Inequality Working Group to foster dialogue and collaborative research among scholars.

Organization of two summer schools for early career scholars in China and Korea.

Hosting of two conferences in Korea and Paris, with plans for five more.

Collaboration with seven visiting scholars from global institutions.

Support for emerging scholars through mentored positions and undergraduate thesis awards.