Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations at Binghamton University had several Research Working Groups that brough together faculty and graduate students around a complex subject of political, cultural, and economic study.

The Research Working Group on Households, Labor-Force Formation, and the World-Economy was primarily made up of Joan Smith, Immanuel Wallerstein, Maria del Carmen Baerga, Mark Beittel, Kathie Friedman Kasaba, Randall H. McGuire, William G. Martin, Kathleen Stanley, Lanny Thompson, and Cynthia Woodsong. According to Immanuel Wallerstein's 1986 article in the Review about the group, it was "concerned with ascertaining whether the great disparity in wage levels in different zones of the world-economy can be explained by the insertion of wage-labor into different kinds of household structures and to what degree, in turn, the varying kinds of household structures can be seen as the consequence of shifting conjunctures of the world-economy." The project received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The group published their research in Households and the World-Economy by Joan Smith, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Hans-Dieter Evers, eds. (1984), in several articles in the Review, and in Creating and Transforming Households: The Constraints of the World-Economy by Joan Smith and Immanuel Wallerstein, eds (1992).