Emmanuel Saez

Emmanuel Saez is a French economist who is a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His work specializes in optimal tax theory and inequality including tracking the incomes of the poor, middle class and rich around the world. Together with economists Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman, their work shows that top earners in the United States have taken an increasingly larger share of overall income over the last three decades, with almost as much inequality as before the Great Depression. He recommends much higher marginal tax rates, of up to 70% or 90%. Among other honors, he received the John Bates Clark Medal in 2009 and a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship in 2010.