Emmanuel Saez

In 2011, Saez and Peter Diamond argued in public media a widely discussed paper that the proper marginal tax rate for North Atlantic societies and especially the United States to impose is 73% (substantially higher than the current 42.5% top US marginal tax rate).

In 2010, the MacArthur Foundation named Saez a MacArthur Fellow for his research into the connection between income and tax policy.

He was the recipient of the 2009 John Bates Clark Medal, awarded to "that American economist under the age of forty who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge." Saez's research contributions have been mainly in the field of Public Economics. The 2009 John Bates Clark citation reads:

Emmanuel Saez graduated from the École Normale Supérieure in 1996 where he studied mathematics and economics. He then received his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1999.

Emmanuel Saez (born November 26, 1972) is a French, naturalized American economist who is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His work, done with Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman, includes tracking the incomes of the poor, middle class and rich around the world. 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) taxes on the rich, up to 70% or 90%. He received the John Bates Clark Medal in 2009, a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship in 2010, and an honorary degree from Harvard University in 2019.

Conservative critics, such as James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute, say that Saez and Piketty measure "market income," the total income before tax excluding income from government. Saez describes it as gross income reported on tax returns before any deductions. This excludes unemployment insurance, welfare payments, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and employer-provided health insurance. Saez says that these are the best data available, as measured consistently since 1913. Critics say that they exaggerate inequality.