Economic Sociology Seminars

Greta Krippner, University of Michigan

Preferred:  Race, Gender, HIV/AIDS and the Individualization of Risk

This talk traces the history of the individualization of risk in American society, asking how risk was transformed from being understood as a property of groups to being understood as a property of individuals. While it is conventional to locate this development either in the “personal responsibility revolution” orchestrated by neoliberal policy entrepreneurs beginning in the 1980s or in the rise of digital technologies in more recent decades, I argue here that the individualization of risk is better understood as the cumulative result of movements for inclusion that sought to gain access to markets for risk for those who had been excluded from them on the basis of race, gender, and HIV status over the course of the twentieth century. I elaborate on this argument using the late-twentieth century case of feminist activists’ mobilization against insurers’ risk classification practices to explain how anti-discrimination movements seeded the individualization of risk. I conclude by putting this paradoxical finding in conversation with a broader literature on “left neoliberalism,” asking whether it is possible to recover the emancipatory possibilities of anti-discrimination movements from their entanglement with neoliberal trajectories.

Kylie Jiwon Hwang, Northwestern, Kellog School of Management

 Startups as Engines of Inclusion: Why do startups hire individuals with criminal records? 

Startups are widely recognized for their contributions to economic growth and innovation, but their role as engines of economic inclusion has received far less attention. We posit that startups face substantial hiring constraints — stemming from the cost of finding good workers and competition with established firms — and examine how these constraints lead to employment opportunities for marginal workers, namely those with criminal records. Using administrative data on U.S. workers, firms, and the criminal justice system, we show that startups or young firms disproportionately hire workers with criminal records. These patterns hold both cross-sectionally and within-workers’ employment trajectories before and after convictions. We argue that the startups’ relative inclusivity is driven by labor demand rather than labor supply: startups conduct fewer background checks and draw from a residual pool of workers that established firms have screened out. Consistent with this mechanism, the sorting is substantially stronger for heavily stigmatized offenses, weaker in tight labor markets where established firms lower their screening standards, and weaker under Ban-the-Box policies that restrict established firms’ ability to screen. While jobs at startups yield worse outcomes than jobs at established firms, they may still benefit workers with records relative to non-employment. At the aggregate level, counties with higher entrepreneurship rates have higher employment rates for individuals with criminal records, as startups serve as a labor market safety valve when established firms screen intensively. 

Armando Lara-Milan, University of California, Berkeley

TBA

Chengwei Liu, ESMT Berlin

TBA

Charles Crabtree, Dartmouth

TBA