Emmanuel Saez

Emmanuel Saez measures income inequality by analyzing detailed tax-return data to track the long-run changes in top income shares. He accesses statistics from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to accurately document how much of the total national income goes to the top percentile of earners. This methodology bypasses the limitations of traditional household surveys.

Emmanuel Saez frequently collaborates with French economist Thomas Piketty and UC Berkeley professor Gabriel Zucman. Together, they have created comprehensive historical databases tracking the concentration of wealth and income in the United States. Their joint research was heavily featured in Piketty's book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century."

Saez, along with Gabriel Zucman, designed a progressive wealth tax proposal aimed at the ultra-rich to combat rising inequality. Their detailed economic framework was notably adopted by US Senator Elizabeth Warren during her 2020 presidential campaign. The proposal outlined a 2% annual tax on households with assets over $50 million.

Emmanuel Saez is a French-American economist who holds a faculty position at the University of California, Berkeley. He also serves as the Director of the Center for Equitable Growth at UC Berkeley. He won the John Bates Clark Medal in 2009 for his contributions to economic measurement.