Corporate success often resembles a snowball. We show how initial luck in hiring talented people, the resulting technological advantage, superior corporate culture, and status-seeking by workers can make small initial differences generate large differences over time.

This paper explores the meaning and implications of the desire by workers for impact. We find that this impact motive can make firms in a competitive labor market act as monopsonists, lead workers with the same characteristics but at different firms to earn different wages, may alleviate the...