by Kim Pernell-Gallagher

In the aftermath of the credit crisis of 2007-2008, the complex financial instrument known as the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) became both a household name and a dirty word.

In the years leading up to the crisis, America’s largest and most systemically important financial institutions developed heavy exposure to CDOs, often by serving as the underwriters of these financial instruments. When the CDO market collapsed in 2008, many of these institutions were forced to take massive write-downs. The losses banks experienced on their CDO portfolios played a major role in bringing about the credit crisis and the Great Recession.

Why, then, did banks underwrite CDOs, an activity that ended up getting them (and the global economy) into so much trouble?

At first glance, the reasons may seem obvious: banks underwrote CDOs because they are competitive, profit-seeking organizations, and they saw that CDOs offered financial rewards. But explanations like these raise more questions than they answer. How did banks come to determine that CDO underwriting was valuable? What kind of information captured their attention?

In a recently published study, I addressed these questions by exploring how 268 U.S. investment and commercial banks responded to the CDO underwriting behavior of their peers, focusing on the years leading up to the credit crisis (1996-2007).

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by Joyce Jiang

Migrant workers are an important part of the labour force in many contemporary economies. In the UK, it is estimated that 15.2 percent of the labour force were foreign-born migrants in 2013.

Migrant workers in the UK are largely concentrated in low-skilled sectors that involve high levels of exploitation. They constitute the worker group who are in considerable need of collective representation. However, the industrial sectors where they are concentrated have low rates of unionisation.

Given these points, the potential for collective mobilisation among migrant workers in the UK is an issue of considerable importance.

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by Chelsea Smith, Robert Crosnoe and Shih-Yi Chao

A hallmark of the late teens through the 20s is attainment of social roles that signify the balance of independence, interdependence, responsibility, and productivity widely considered to define adulthood in Western societies. Completing education, taking on full-time work, and starting a family are social signals that someone has left adolescence to become a “real” adult.

This process of becoming an adult, however, looks different for today’s young people than it did 20 years ago. Over the last several decades, the transition into adulthood has become delayed and elongated for two reasons.

First, the decline of the manufacturing sector and growth of the information/service sector have massively reshaped the economy into an hourglass labor market with little middle ground between the security afforded by professional careers and the insecurity of low-wage work. Second, that economic restructuring has affected cultural views about when young people “should” form families—after securing economic independence, which is increasingly difficult.

The transition into adulthood also looks different based on youth’s social class and family background.

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by Jackelyn Hwang, Michael Hankinson and Kreg Steven Brown

Sometime in 2006, three women in similar financial circumstances bought homes in three different cities, each pursuing the American Dream that finally seemed within their reach. Sophia in San Francisco settled on a 2-bedroom walk-up in a working-class white neighborhood close to where she had been renting for years. She bought the unit with a conventional prime mortgage. Cathy in Charleston found a 3-bedroom craftsman near her current residence in a working-class majority-minority neighborhood. She also purchased her home with a conventional prime loan. Bianca in Baltimore fell in love with a 2-bedroom condo in a working-class section of the city’s predominantly minority West Side and within a few blocks of her parents’ house.

Unlike Sophia and Cathy, Bianca purchased her home with a subprime loan.

Why did Bianca get a subprime loan while Sophia and Cathy did not? With subprime lending booming across the country, what led to these different loans for otherwise similar buyers? Despite living in different cities, all three women bought homes in working class neighborhoods with moderate median incomes and homeownership levels.

The racial make-up of each neighborhood played a role in their likelihood of receiving a subprime loan.

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by Kristen Lucas

Vonda accompanied the CEO as he escorted several VIPs around the corporate office to make introductions. “This is where Geoff would sit if he were here today,” the CEO said and pointed to an empty chair in an office that belonged to a high-level manager who was out for the day. The guests laughed and said “hello” to the empty chair. Then they lingered at the door for a couple more minutes as the CEO outlined Geoff’s primary responsibilities and listed several notable accomplishments. Meanwhile Vonda—who did all the behind-the-scenes work of coordinating the visitors’ meetings, meals, and more—was never introduced by name.

Vonda was devastated. “I was standing right there with them the whole time and no one said hello. It was like I didn’t matter, like I was an invisible non-entity. My boss made it clear that Geoff’s empty chair is far more important than me.”

Vonda wasn’t harassed, discriminated against, bullied, or even abused. Her boss didn’t do anything illegal. He didn’t do anything immoral. He didn’t do anything that was explicitly uncivil. In fact, it is likely he didn’t intend to do anything at all. Yet, his introducing an empty chair and overlooking Vonda still was hurtful.

Any degradation of people’s self-worth and self-respect—whether it is triggered by an interaction, a condition of work, or a problematic organizational climate—can be considered a violation of workplace dignity.

In its most basic terms, workplace dignity refers to the self-recognized and other-recognized worth that is acquired from (or denied by) engaging in work activity.

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