At OI’s fourth annual conference on economic mobility, held in Cambridge, MA on October 9–10, 2025, researchers shared new work on the drivers of economic opportunity and intergenerational mobility across economics and other social sciences. The event brought together scholars with diverse perspectives and featured opening remarks by Raj Chetty and a keynote by David Autor, who examined how automation and AI are reshaping jobs—changing the mix of tasks and expertise required and influencing wages and employment in complex ways.

Jamie Fogel, Ines Guix, and Matthew Staiger organized the conference. For any questions, please contact Matthew at [email protected].

PROGRAM

For program start times, see the 2025 Conference Schedule.

Thursday, 10/9/2025

• The Making of Equality: How the Second World War Shaped the Norwegian Income Distribution
  

  Presented by: Kjell G. Salvanes ( Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics)
  Co-Authors: Eirik B. Abel and Ran Abramitzky

• Like A Good Neighbor: Childhood Neighbors Influence Occupation Choice
  

  Presented by: Ryan Hill (Northwestern Kellogg)
  Co-Authors: Michael Andrews, Joseph Price, and Riley Wilson

• Separation of Church and State Curricula? Examining Public and Religious Private School Textbooks

  Presented by: Anjali Adukia (University of Chicago, Harris School of Public Policy)
  Co-Authors: Emileigh Harrison

• Frontier Knowledge in College and Student Success

  Presented by: Barbara Biasi (Yale School of Management)
  Co-Authors: Song Ma

• Who Borrows on Credit Cards?
  

  Presented by: Dominic Russel and Claire Shi (Harvard University)
  

• Generative AI and Organizational Structure

  Presented by: Fiona Chen and Jimmy Stratton (Harvard University)

• Keys to Upward Mobility: Typewriter Adoption and Women’s Economic Outcomes

  Presented by: Myera Rashid (Northwestern University)
  

• Getting Beneath the Veil of Intergenerational Mobility: Evidence from Three Cities

  Presented by: Oren Danieli (Tel Aviv University School of Economics)
  Co-Authors: Tanaya Devi and Roland G. Fryer, Jr.

Friday, 10/10/2025

• A Chip Off The Old Block? Genetics and The Intergenerational Transmission of Socioeconomic Status

  Presented by: Sjoerd van Alten (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
  Co-Authors: Leandro Carvalho, Marina Aguiar Palma, Silvia Barcellos, and Titus Galama
  

• Association between Clinical Health and Income: Evidence from Korean Health Exams

  Presented by: Amy Finkelstein (MIT)
  Co-Authors: Liran Einav and Sehyun Hong

• Immigration Restrictions and Natives’ Intergenerational Mobility: Evidence from the 1920s US Quota Acts

  Presented by: Marco Tabellini (Harvard Business School)
  Co-Authors: James Feigenbaum, Yi-Ju Hung, and Monia Tomasella

• Artificial Intelligence in the Office and the Factory: Evidence from Administrative Software Registry Data

  Presented by: Gustavo de Souza (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago)

• Keynote Address

   Presented by: David Autor

• Career Values for Labor Markets: Evidence from Robot Adoption

  Presented by: Maria Petrova (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
  Co-Authors:  Gregor Schubert, Bledi Taska, and Pinar Yildirim

• The Social Construction of Race during Reconstruction

   Presented by: Richard Hornbeck (University of Chicago, Booth School of Business)
  Co-Authors:  Anjali Adukia, Daniel Keniston, and Benjamin Lualdi

KEYNOTE TALK BY DAVID AUTOR

David Autor is the Daniel (1972) and Gail Rubinfeld Professor in the MIT Department of Economics, codirector of the NBER Labor Studies Program and the MIT Shaping the Future of Work Initiative. His scholarship explores the labor-market impacts of technological change and globalization on job polarization, skill demands, earnings levels and inequality, and electoral outcomes.

Autor has received numerous awards for both his scholarship—the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the Sherwin Rosen Prize for outstanding contributions to the field of Labor Economics, the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2019, the Society for Progress Medal in 2021—and for his teaching, including the MIT MacVicar Faculty Fellowship. In 2020, Autor received the Heinz 25th Special Recognition Award from the Heinz Family Foundation for his work “transforming our understanding of how globalization and technological change are impacting jobs and earning prospects for American workers.” In 2023, Autor was selected as one of two researchers across all scientific fields a NOMIS Distinguished Scientist. In 2024, Autor was one of five senior scholars selected by the Schmidt Sciences Foundation as an AI2050 Senior Fellow.

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The program for last year’s conference can be found here.