The Predistribution Initiative | Shaping a Fairer Economy

Our Economy is Fractured

Decision-making power and financial gains have accrued to too few, compounding and entrenching unhealthy market concentration and economic inequality. Meanwhile, workers, communities, consumers, and regions remain undervalued and with little influence.

A clear majority of people worldwide across generations and social classes globally agree that: “The main divide in our society is between ordinary citizens and the political and economic elite.”

Source: Ipsos

What is Predistribution?

Coined by Jacob Hacker, predistribution involves reforming economic systems through which wealth is created to more adequately value workers, communities, consumers, and nature, thereby resulting in a fairer distribution of risk and return across all stakeholders in society.

What We Do

Economic Analysis

Analyzing the economic “distributional” impacts of investment activity

Financial Analysis + Accounting Tools

Reforming financial analysis and accounting tools (incentives) to better value people and nature, thereby reconnecting financial value with real world value

Predistributive Structures + Approaches

Advancing predistributive market and investment structures, including broadening equity-linked compensation and corporate governance participation

Learn More About Our Work

Recent Publications

Boeing: What Investors Can Learn from a Cautionary Tale in Corporate Governance

Boeing’s strong financial performance masked years of building safety and operational risk. This briefing explains why investors couldn’t see it and which governance tools could surface similar risks earlier across portfolios.

The Spectrum of Worker Participation in Corporate Governance: A Briefing for Investors

Worker directors already sit on the boards of some of the world's largest listed companies. Companies representing 11% of global market capitalisation have employee directors, including SAP, Siemens, Allianz, Novo Nordisk and TotalEnergies. This briefing by Tom Powdrill maps the main models of worker participation, from German supervisory boards to French employee directors on unitary boards and Nordic rights that workers can choose to activate. It finds that participation is far more widespread where workers hold an enforceable right than where boards decide voluntarily. Support for worker participation spans the political spectrum and includes institutional investors such as Railpen, which leads the Workforce Engagement Coalition, and Amundi. Worker directors bring operational knowledge and perspectives that can strengthen board decisions alongside shareholders.

Governance Sea Change: Why Labor’s Exclusion Is a Governance Design Flaw

Corporate governance in the US and UK rests on a simple idea: shareholders with money at stake will watch over companies. That idea is under strain. Most institutional capital is now highly diversified and increasingly passive, so the incentive to focus on any single firm is weak. At the same time, policymakers are cutting back the shareholder rights and disclosures that made engagement easier. Tom asks who else has a deep, long-term stake in a company’s success. The answer is its workforce. Workers see the business up close every day. They often spot risks and opportunities before they reach the boardroom. And they can’t spread their jobs across a 3,000-stock index. The logic that justifies equity pay for executives points toward a governance role for workers too. As Tom puts it, today’s system should give ‘voice’ to those less likely to ‘exit’.

Reforming capital markets to build broad-based prosperity and reduce economic inequality