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Gabriel Zucman
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Gabriel Zucman (right) at a conference in Vincennes on October 31, 2025

Key Information

Gabriel Zucman (French pronunciation: [ɡabʁijɛl zykman]; born 30 October 1986) is a French economist known for his expertise on tax havens. He has been a chaired professor at the Paris School of Economics since 2023,[1] Summer Research Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy,[2] and the director of the EU Tax Observatory in Paris.[3]

Zucman has argued for a global wealth tax on centimillionaires and richer high-net-worth individuals.[4][5]

The author of The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens (2015), Zucman is known for his research on tax havens and corporate tax havens.[6][7][8]

Zucman's research has found that the leading corporate tax havens are all OECD–compliant, and that tax disputes between high–tax locations and havens are very rare. His papers are some of the most cited papers on research into tax havens.[9] Zucman is also known for his work on the quantification of the financial scale of base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) tax avoidance techniques employed by multinationals in corporate tax havens,[10][11] through which he identified Ireland as the world's largest corporate tax haven, based on profit-shifting measures, in 2018.[12]

In 2018, Zucman was the recipient of the Prize for the Best Young Economist in France, awarded by the Cercle des économistes and Le Monde in recognition of his research on tax evasion and avoidance and their economic consequences.[13] He was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal in 2023, a prize for economists under the age of 40.[14]

Early life and education

[edit]

Zucman was born in Paris in 1986, and is the son of two French doctors. His mother is an immunology researcher while his father treats HIV patients.[15] He is Jewish from his father's side.[16]

In interviews, Zucman has described the "traumatic political event of my youth" as being when Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the final rounds of the 2002 French presidential election. He was 15 at the time. Later, In 2018, Zucman said of that event: "A lot of my political thinking since then has been focused on how we can avoid this disaster from happening again. So far, we’ve failed".[15]

From 2005 to 2010, Zucman attended the École normale supérieure de Cachan, one of France's prestigious Grandes Écoles.[17] Hereafter, he first earned his M.Sc. in economic policy analysis in 2008 and a PhD in economics in 2013, both from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) and the Paris School of Economics. His PhD dissertation, under the supervision of Thomas Piketty, explored whether the wealthy left France due to its wealth tax.[18] The dissertation received the French Economic Association's award for best PhD dissertation in 2014.

Career

[edit]

After finishing his studies, Zucman worked for a year as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley) before accepting a position as assistant professor of economics at the London School of Economics (LSE) and the same position at UC Berkeley, being currently on leave from LSE. Moreover, Zucman has worked as co-director of the World Wealth and Income Database (WID), a database aiming at the provision of access to extensive data series on the world distribution of income and wealth, since 2015.[19]

Besides his research and teaching activities, Zucman has refereed for several economic journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economic Studies, Econometrica, and the Journal of Political Economy. He also co–founded and acted as editor–in–chief for Regards croisés sur l'économie, a review aimed at exposing the French general public to academic research in economics.[17][15]

In 2019, the faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government voted to offer Zucman a tenured position in the department, but the president and provost of Harvard University blocked it.[20]

Zucman is the founding director of the EU Tax Observatory, an independent research laboratory hosted by the Paris School of Economics.[21][3]

In 2023, he was elected as a "professeur des universités" (tenured professor) in the department of economics at the Ecole normale supérieure and at the Paris School of Economics.[22]

In 2025, France's Socialist Party endorsed a proposal by Zucman for a 2% wealth tax targeting the top 0.01% of wealth holders in the 2026 national budget.[23]

Research

[edit]
Total taxes paid as a percent of taxable income for a few countries. By income group, and billionaires. From a May 3, 2024 opinion piece of his in the New York Times.[24]

Zucman is known for his research on tax evasion and international tax avoidance, but has made contributions to the field of public economics more broadly.[14]

Much of Zucman's research is on issues of economic inequality. Zucman himself says, "a lot of my work is about trying to improve our measurement tools."[25]

In August 2014 in Capital is Back, Zucman and French economist Thomas Piketty investigate the evolution of aggregate wealth–to–income ratios in the top eight developed economies, reaching back as far as 1700 in the case of the U.S., U.K., Germany, and France, and find that wealth–income ratios have risen from about 200–300% in 1970 to 400–600% in 2010, levels unknown since the 18th and 19th centuries. Most of the change can be explained by the long-run recovery of asset prices, the slowdown of productivity, and population growth.[26] Zucman has co-written several papers with Thomas Piketty.[15]

A second focus is his research on tax havens.[15] In his 2015 book The Hidden Wealth of Nations, Zucman uses the systematic anomalies in international investment positions to show that the net foreign asset positions of rich countries are generally underestimated because they don't capture most of the assets held by households in offshore tax havens.[15] Based on his calculations, he finds about 8% of the global financial wealth of households, or $7.6 trillion, to be held in tax havens, three–quarters of which go undeclared.[27]

In 2017–18, Zucman focused on the scale of multinational tax avoidance by base erosion and profit shifting ("BEPS") tools in the largest corporate tax havens.[15] Zucman believes Ireland, recognised as a major corporate tax haven, is still materially underestimated by Orbis–database studies due to technical factors (even though these studies rank Ireland as the 5th largest global corporate Conduit OFC).[28] Research published by Zucman, Tørsløv and Wier in June 2018, showed that Ireland is the largest corporate tax haven in the world, even larger than the entire Caribbean corporate tax haven system.[10][11][12] This research also showed that tax disputes between high–tax jurisdictions and corporate tax havens are extremely rare, and that tax disputes really only occur between high–tax jurisdictions.[29]

The Hidden Wealth of Nations (2015)

[edit]

The Hidden Wealth of Nations (2015), Zucman's most influential work, primarily focused on the fact that official national statistics underestimate foreign assets because offshore wealth is not properly accounted for.[30] In his book, he used systematic anomalies in international investment positions to showcase hidden offshore wealth.[31] These anomalies indicated that global assets exceeded global liabilities, which is theoretically impossible, thereby signaling the potential presence of missing offshore wealth. Before Zucman's work, most estimates of global wealth inequality relied on national tax records and surveys, which systematically excluded offshore assets. His methods allowed him to detect wealth that is intentionally hidden.[32] This work changed how governments and economists understood tax evasion. It later went on to influence international G20 policy discussions and research for the World Inequality Database.[33][34] His key findings were that 8% of global financial wealth is held offshore, roughly $7.6 trillion.[35] This finding laid the groundwork for his advocacy of the global wealth tax through the EU Tax Observatory and the G20 Summit.[36] His estimates are now used in debates about global tax transparency and have contributed to shifting tax evasion into mainstream economic and political debate. While his estimates have been widely influential, some economists have noted the difficulty of precisely measuring highly mobile and hard to find financial assets, and therefore state that offshore wealth may fluctuate with regulatory and financial changes.[37][38]

Along with James R. Hines Jr. and Dhammika Dharmapala, Gabriel Zucman is noted as a leader in the study of tax havens,[39] and his papers are amongst the most cited research on tax havens.[9] As of October 2018, Zucman ranks 1st out of "19,829 economists whose first publication of any kind is 10 or fewer years ago", on the IDEAS/RePEc St Louis Reserve database of papers by global economists.[40]

Much of Zucman's other research deals with the effect of the G20's crackdown on tax havens and corporate tax havens, cross–border taxation and multinational profit shifting, the long–term relationship between wealth and inheritance, and the trajectory of wealth inequality in the United States. Zucman's research and commentary have been cited by international news outlets such as The New York Times and The Guardian.[41][11][42][15]

Tørsløv-Wier-Zucman 2018 list

[edit]
See also: Tax havens § Tax haven lists

The only tax havens from the Tørsløv-Wier-Zucman list that have ever appeared on an OECD list of tax havens, are some Caribbean locations, namely The British Virgin Islands (but not the Cayman Islands).[43] Nine of the top ten locations from the Tørsløv-Wier-Zucman list, match the top ten on the James R. Hines 2010 list (assuming that Zucman's "Caribbean" is mostly two locations, the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands; Zucman lists Bermuda separately).

Missing Profits of Nations. Appendix: Table 2: Shifted Profits: Country–by–Country Estimates (2015)[10]
Zucman
Tax Haven
 Rank by
Profit Shifted 		Corporate
Profits ($bn) 		Of Which:
Local ($bn) 		Of Which:
Foreign ($bn) 		Profits
Shifted ($bn) 		Effective
Tax Rate (%) 		Corp. Tax
Gain/Loss (%)
Belgium 10 80 48 32 -13 19% 16%
Ireland*† 1 174 58 116 -106 4% 58%
Luxembourg* 6 91 40 51 -47 3% 50%
Malta 11 14 1 13 -12 5% 90%
Netherlands*† 5 195 106 89 -57 10% 32%
Caribbean*‡Δ 2 102 4 98 -97 2% 100%
Bermuda*‡ 9 25 1 25 -24 0% n.a
Singapore*† 3 120 30 90 -70 8% 41%
Puerto Rico 7 53 10 43 -42 3% 79%
Hong Kong*‡ 8 95 45 50 -39 18% 33%
Switzerland*† 4 95 35 60 -58 21% 20%
All Others 12 -51

(*) Identified as one of the largest 10 tax havens by James R. Hines Jr. in 2010 (the Hines 2010 List).[44]
(†) Identified as one of the 5 Conduits (Ireland, Singapore, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom), by CORPNET in 2017.[45]
(‡) Identified as one of the largest 5 Sinks (British Virgin Islands, Luxemburg, Hong Kong, Jersey, Bermuda), by CORPNET in 2017.[45]
(Δ) Identified on the first, and the largest, OECD 2000 list of 35 tax havens (the OECD list only contained Trinidad & Tobago by 2017); only some Caribbean territories were listed by the OECD in 2000.[43]

Wealth tax on billionaires

[edit]

Zucman researches and advocates wealth taxation as a fiscal tool to address extreme inequality and combat tax evasion in an era of rapidly growing billionaire fortunes.[46] Specifically, he has supported a 2% wealth tax on those with wealth above €100 million.[47] The basis of Zucman's argument is that contemporary tax systems are highly regressive at the top with the ultra-wealthy often paying effective tax rates lower than average.[48] According to one analysis cited by Zucman, billionaires paid on the order of only ~0.3% of their wealth per year in total tax.[48] He argues that implementing his wealth tax could substantially boost public revenue and reduce inequality with minimal adverse effects on the economy without impeding overall investment or innovation.[49]

To enforce his wealth tax on billionaires, Zucman proposes multilateral coordination including expanding automatic exchange of financial information across jurisdictions and even developing a global asset registry to ensure the wealthy cannot relocate or hide funds to escape his tax.[46] His proposal for a global minimum tax on billionaires was discussed by the G20 ahead of the 2024 summit.[50]

Personal life

[edit]

Zucman is married to the French economist Claire Montialoux, whom he met in 2006.[15]

Bibliography

[edit]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Gabriel Zucman

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Gabriel Zucman (born 1986) is a French economist specializing in , particularly , corporate profit shifting, and the measurement of and inequality. He earned his PhD from the in 2013 under Thomas Piketty's supervision, held a position at the London School of Economics from 2014 to 2015, and joined the in 2015 as of , where he also serves as Summer Research Professor and Summer School Director for the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on and Income Inequality. Zucman's research has advanced empirical methods for quantifying offshore and , including estimates that approximately 8% of global household financial is held in tax havens and that multinationals shift 36% of their profits to low-tax jurisdictions. Collaborating with economists like and Piketty, he co-developed Distributional National Accounts, revealing that U.S. pre-tax for the top 1% grew by 204% from 1980 to 2014, compared to 1% for the bottom 50%, with after-tax disparities remaining stark. His work using leaked data such as the demonstrated that the wealthiest 0.01% evade around 25% of their taxes, far exceeding rates from standard audits. In 2023, Zucman received the from the for these contributions to and inequality analysis. He also directs the EU Tax Observatory and co-directs the World Inequality Lab, influencing global policy discussions on taxation and redistribution.

Background

Early life

Gabriel Zucman was born in , , in 1986. He is the son of two French physicians; his mother works as an immunology researcher, while his father treats patients with . Zucman was raised in a well-off family environment in , which provided an intellectually stimulating upbringing conducive to his later academic pursuits. Little additional public information exists regarding his childhood or formative influences prior to formal education, as Zucman maintains a private personal profile.

Education

Zucman attended the , a selective French , from 2005 to 2010, where he received training in and related fields as part of the institution's rigorous curriculum integrating advanced undergraduate and graduate-level studies. In 2008, he earned a (MSc) in Economic Policy Analysis from the (PSE), focusing on analytical tools for public policy evaluation. From 2009 to 2013, Zucman completed a PhD in at PSE, with his dissertation addressing international financial flows and their implications for , under the supervision of faculty affiliated with PSE's partner institutions including the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS).

Professional career

Initial appointments

Following completion of his PhD in economics from the Paris School of Economics in 2013, Gabriel Zucman was appointed Assistant Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, serving in that role from 2013 to 2014. In this position, he focused on research related to international tax evasion and wealth inequality, building on his doctoral work supervised by Thomas Piketty. He then transitioned to a postdoctoral scholar position at the University of California, Berkeley, invited by Emmanuel Saez to collaborate on empirical studies of taxation and inequality. This postdoc facilitated his integration into Berkeley's economics department, where he joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 2015. These early appointments marked Zucman's entry into prominent international academic institutions, emphasizing his specialization in public economics and offshore wealth measurement.

Current positions and affiliations

Gabriel Zucman is a Professor of Economics at the (PSE) and – PSL, a position he has held since 2023. He also serves as Summer Research Professor in the Department of Economics at the , since 2024, with joint appointments in the . At PSE, Zucman holds a chaired professorship and is the holder of the PSE Stone Center chair on wealth and income inequality. He directs the Tax Observatory, an initiative focused on corporate tax avoidance and policy reforms, and co-directs the World Inequality Lab, which maintains the tracking global income and wealth distributions. Zucman maintains affiliations with research institutions including the (CEPR) as a research fellow and the (NBER) as a faculty research associate. At Berkeley's Stone Center on Wealth and Income Inequality, he co-directs the summer research program.

Research contributions

Tax evasion and offshore wealth

Gabriel Zucman developed a macroeconomic approach to quantify offshore by analyzing discrepancies between countries' reported assets and liabilities in international investment positions, revealing hidden flows to tax havens. In his 2013 analysis, he estimated that approximately 8% of global household financial —equivalent to 10% of world GDP, or roughly $7.6 trillion as of 2013—was held offshore, primarily in jurisdictions like , , and the that facilitate non-reporting to authorities. These estimates derive from bilateral investment data showing "missing " that balances global portfolios, with about half of such assets concentrated in Europe-based havens. Zucman's research highlights the concentration of offshore evasion among the wealthiest individuals, using leaked bank data (e.g., ) and tax amnesty programs from , , and . Collaborating with Annette Alstadsæter and Niels Johannesen, he found that 90% of offshore accounts in these countries belong to the top 1% of earners, with the top 0.01% accounting for over 50% of hidden and evading 20-30% of their true liabilities—far exceeding rates detected by standard audits, which capture only 5-10%. This skewed distribution implies annual global tax losses of $200 billion from and taxes, representing 10% of worldwide revenue. Further studies extend these findings to the , leveraging IRS audit data to show that the top 0.001% evade about 25% of taxes through offshore channels, compared to under 1% for average taxpayers, underscoring how traditional compliance measures underestimate evasion at the apex of the distribution. Zucman's 2024 updates maintain that offshore financial wealth remains at 10% of global GDP, despite post-Panama Papers transparency efforts, as havens adapt via shell companies and trusts. His work attributes much of this persistence to the lack of coordinated sanctions, estimating that full enforcement could recover revenues equivalent to funding universal public goods like in developing nations. Zucman also examines behavioral responses, finding that higher audit risks prompt substitution from illegal offshore evasion to legal avoidance strategies, such as income shifting, without substantially reducing overall noncompliance among the ultra-wealthy. These insights, grounded in administrative and leaked datasets, challenge prior underestimations from self-reported surveys and emphasize the causal role of secrecy in enabling evasion, rather than mere .

Wealth inequality measurement

Gabriel Zucman has advanced the measurement of inequality through indirect estimation techniques that leverage administrative tax data, addressing the shortcomings of household surveys which often underrepresent top holdings due to sampling biases, non-response among the wealthy, and underreporting of assets. In collaboration with , Zucman pioneered the capitalization of capital incomes reported on tax returns to infer underlying stocks, combining this with aggregate national balance sheets from sources like the Federal Reserve's Flow of Funds to ensure consistency with macroeconomic totals. This approach, detailed in their 2016 study covering the from 1913 onward, applies a uniform —calibrated at around 6-7% for equities and lower for safer assets—to divide reported dividends, , and rents by the imputed yield, yielding estimates of distribution by . The method benchmarks survey microdata against tax aggregates for the recent period while extrapolating historical distributions using estate tax returns and income capitalization for pre-1962 data when micro-files were limited. Saez and Zucman found that the top 1% share in the fell to about 22% by 1980 amid progressive taxation and wars but rebounded to 39% by 2014, contrasting with Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) estimates that show slower growth at the top due to reliance on voluntary reporting. Adjustments for underreporting—estimated at 20-30% for high- capital gains—and inclusion of pensions and closely held businesses further elevate top shares compared to raw survey figures. This framework underpins the Distributional (DINA), co-developed by Zucman and colleagues, which allocates total national from macroeconomic accounts to groups using distributions, enabling cross-country and time-series comparisons. Globally, Zucman's 2019 review extends these techniques, reconciling national wealth surveys with offshore data and imputing top shares where direct observations are scarce, estimating that the top 0.1% hold 25% of world wealth as of 2016—higher than in most survey-based assessments which capture only 10-15% due to evasion and non-disclosure. Critics, including analyses using alternative realizations or firm-level data, argue that assumes stable returns across heterogeneous assets and may overestimate if rates vary by wealth rank, though Zucman and Saez reconciled their top 0.01% shares (around 10-12% in recent years) with independent studies like Smith, Zidar, and Zwick () by incorporating underreported entrepreneurial equity. Empirical validation comes from matching DINA estimates to leaked datasets like , which confirm elevated offshore concentrations among the ultra-wealthy.

Corporate profit shifting and tax havens

Zucman has conducted quantifying the extent to which multinational corporations (MNCs) artificially shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions, often referred to as tax havens, thereby eroding the base in high-tax countries. In collaboration with Tørsløv and Ludvig Wier, he developed a that leverages discrepancies in aggregate country-level on MNC sales, profits, and employee compensation to identify "missing profits" booked outside countries of economic activity. This approach exploits the fact that tax havens exhibit anomalously high profit-to-sales ratios—often exceeding 50%—while maintaining low wage-to-sales ratios, indicating limited real economic substance such as production or . Their seminal paper, "The Missing Profits of Nations," estimates that approximately 36% of global MNC profits—equivalent to $616 billion in 2015—were shifted to tax havens, with the figure rising to $969 billion (37% of MNC profits) by 2019. U.S.-headquartered MNCs account for a disproportionate share, shifting about 54% of their foreign earnings to havens, compared to 30% for other nationalities, resulting in roughly 20% of total U.S. corporate profits being booked in such jurisdictions as of the mid-2010s—a tenfold increase from the 1980s. Key havens identified include the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Ireland, Hong Kong, and Bermuda, where affiliates report elevated profitability without commensurate real activity. Zucman's subsequent work extends these estimates historically, revealing a steady rise in profit shifting from less than 5% of MNC profits in to over 37% by , driven by the expansion of intra-firm transactions, manipulations, and the growth of the industry since the 1980s. These shifts correspond to annual global revenue losses of $200–300 billion, concentrated in economies, where MNCs originate most shifted profits but capture little of the tax savings due to haven residency rules. Zucman's analysis attributes this phenomenon causally to statutory differentials, with empirical tests showing that profit booking responds elastically to tax incentives rather than underlying . The research underscores mechanisms like debt shifting, intellectual property relocation, and royalty payments, which allow MNCs to allocate to low-tax entities while deducting expenses in high-tax ones. For instance, U.S. MNCs' post-2017 behavior showed limited repatriation of shifted profits, suggesting persistent incentives for avoidance despite reforms. Zucman's estimates, derived from Bureau van Dijk's Orbis database covering nearly all large MNCs, provide a benchmark for debates on (BEPS), though they rely on the assumption that abnormal haven profits reflect artificial rather than genuine intangible asset returns—a contention supported by low tangible correlations in havens.

Policy advocacy

Wealth tax proposals

Gabriel Zucman has proposed progressive es to address the low effective rates paid by billionaires, which he estimates at approximately 0.3% of their wealth annually, compared to higher rates for average taxpayers. In the United States, collaborating with , Zucman advocated for a on the top 0.1% of families holding $9–13 trillion in assets, suggesting moderate rates such as a 3% marginal above $1 billion to curb wealth concentration without historical precedents of economic harm. Their analysis supports proposals like a 2% on exceeding $50 million and an additional 1% above $1 billion, projected to generate substantial revenue while respecting administrative feasibility through annual valuations of publicly traded assets and sampling for private holdings. On the global scale, Zucman presented a blueprint for a coordinated minimum effective taxation standard targeting ultra-high-net-worth individuals, requiring those with over $1 billion in to pay at least 2% annually. This baseline proposal would affect roughly 3,000 billionaires worldwide, generating $200–$250 billion in annual revenue, which could fund public goods like and initiatives. Implementation would leverage domestic tools such as presumptive income taxes on unrealized gains or direct levies, coordinated internationally via enhanced reporting on multinational ownership and "tax collector of last resort" mechanisms to prevent avoidance through residency shifts. In , Zucman's recent proposal, dubbed the "Zucman ," calls for households with net assets exceeding €100 million to pay a minimum 2% on their total , aiming to reverse the declining effective taxation of the richest amid concerns over inequality. He argues this floor would ensure billionaires contribute proportionally, halting the drop in their burden relative to middle-income groups, while international coordination mitigates flight risks. Zucman emphasizes that such es are administratively viable, drawing on historical European experiences and modern data from returns and financial accounts, without necessitating perfect valuation of all assets.

Global minimum tax and reforms

Gabriel Zucman has supported the international coordination of corporate ation through the OECD's Pillar Two framework, established by an agreement among 137 countries in October 2021, which imposes a 15% global minimum effective on multinational enterprises with annual revenues exceeding €750 million. In a 2022 study co-authored with Dhammika Dharmapala, Kyle De Vox, and Li Liu, Zucman estimated that full implementation of this reform would generate approximately $220 billion in additional annual global by reducing profit shifting to low- jurisdictions, though actual yields depend on domestic top-up taxes and compliance. He views this as a step toward curbing competition but has noted potential loopholes, such as substance carve-outs, that could undermine its effectiveness if not addressed. Building on the corporate minimum tax model, Zucman proposed extending similar multilateral standards to individual taxation. In a June 25, 2024, report prepared for finance ministers and led by the EU Tax Observatory, he advocated for a coordinated 2% minimum effective on the net of ultra-high-net-worth individuals exceeding $1 billion, applicable to roughly 3,000 billionaires worldwide. This framework would allow countries to impose top-up taxes to reach the minimum after crediting foreign levies, aiming to raise $200–$250 billion annually while preventing relocation-driven , with implementation feasible via existing information exchange networks like the . Zucman's reforms emphasize empirical data on low effective rates—often below 1% of for billionaires—and advocate for enhanced transparency, such as public registers of and real-time cross-border , to enforce these minima without relying on unilateral measures that provoke . He argues that such global standards, akin to those for corporations, are essential for fiscal sovereignty amid rising concentration, though critics question administrative feasibility and potential disincentives to investment.

Reception and criticisms

Awards and academic recognition

In 2023, Zucman was awarded the by the , a prestigious honor given annually to an economist under the age of 40 for significant contributions to economic thought and knowledge. The medal recognizes his pioneering research on the measurement of wealth inequality, offshore wealth, and international . In 2024, he was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society, an accolade bestowed on scholars for outstanding contributions to or economic theory. Zucman received the Bernacer Prize in 2019 from the Bernacer Prize Committee, awarded to young European economists for exceptional work in and . That same year, he was granted a by the , supporting early-career researchers demonstrating high promise in their fields. Earlier recognitions include the 2018 Prize for the Best Young French Economist, conferred by Le Monde and the Cercle des économistes for innovative economic analysis. In 2017, he earned the Excellence Award in Global Economic Affairs from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, honoring his research on global wealth and taxation. In 2021, Zucman was selected as an Andrew Carnegie Fellow by the Carnegie Corporation of New York to advance scholarship on inequality and related policy issues. His book The Triumph of Injustice (co-authored with Emmanuel Saez) received the Hans Matthöfer Prize from the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and the Colbert Prize from the Fondation Colbert. Additionally, in 2014, his PhD dissertation was honored with the French Economic Association award for the best in the field.

Empirical and methodological critiques

Critiques of Zucman's empirical approaches to measuring wealth and income inequality have centered on assumptions about unreported income and its distribution. In collaboration with and , Zucman estimated that the top 1% income share in the United States rose from 9% in 1960 to 15% in 2019, attributing much of the increase to underreported high-end earnings concentrated among executives and the wealthy via offshore accounts. However, economists Gerald Auten and David Splinter contested this, finding a smaller rise of approximately 4.3 percentage points from 1962 to 2019, arguing that Zucman et al. over-allocate unreported income to the top based on selective interpretations of , while IRS evidence indicates higher relative underreporting rates among lower-income groups engaged in cash-based activities like or services. Methodological differences also arise in handling government transfers, public spending, and deficits. Zucman and coauthors allocate such expenditures neutrally across income groups to avoid distributional distortions, but Auten and Splinter incorporate select public goods (e.g., and ) as imputed income primarily benefiting the bottom 99%, which boosts their estimated share by up to 20 percentage points in some periods. Additionally, Auten and Splinter assign fiscal deficits to the top 1% based on historical progressive tax patterns, reducing their income share by nearly 0.5 percentage points, a step Zucman et al. deem inconsistent with standard practices. These disputes highlight sensitivities in Zucman's imputation methods, where small changes in assumptions about evasion rates—drawing from Scandinavian audit studies extrapolated globally—can significantly alter inequality trends. Zucman's offshore wealth estimates, introduced in his 2013 paper using balance-of-payments discrepancies to infer hidden financial assets (estimating 8% of global household financial wealth offshore, equivalent to 10% of world GDP), have faced scrutiny for methodological limitations. The approach captures only financial assets, excluding non-financial holdings like , potentially understating total offshore wealth or misrepresenting its composition, as noted in subsequent analyses reconciling global aggregates. Critics argue that discrepancies may stem from measurement errors, misclassifications, or unreported inward investments rather than pure evasion, leading to overstated net foreign asset positions for creditor nations like the and . In tax burden analyses, such as those in The Triumph of Injustice (2019) with Saez, Zucman claimed effective tax rates for the ultra-wealthy (top 0.001%) fell to around 20% by 2014, below the bottom 50%'s rate, but this relied on excluding refundable credits like the from the poor's liabilities and assuming full incidence on shareholders—a departure from conventional partial-incidence models shared across levels. Such adjustments have been described as opaque and empirically suspect, inflating bottom-quintile rates contrary to IRS conventions, with economists like Kopczuk and Summers labeling the underlying data "substantially inaccurate and misleading." Zucman has defended these by emphasizing hidden capital , but sensitivity to imputation rules persists, as reallocating unreported proportionally to reported earnings skews burdens upward for high earners beyond audit-verified patterns.

Economic impact debates

![Taxes paid as percent of taxable income for billionaires][float-right] Debates surrounding the economic impacts of Gabriel Zucman's policy proposals, particularly progressive taxes and international reforms, focus on their effects on public , capital allocation, investment incentives, and long-term growth. Zucman and co-authors assert that a coordinated 2% annual minimum tax on wealth exceeding $1 billion could generate $200-250 billion in global yearly from approximately 3,000 individuals, primarily by curbing existing evasion and avoidance without substantially reducing productive investment, as much wealth is already held in low-return, tax-minimizing assets like art or . They argue this could fund infrastructure and social programs, potentially enhancing growth through reduced inequality, drawing on historical evidence from periods of higher top marginal rates where was limited under strong enforcement. Critics, including economists from institutions like the Peterson Institute for International Economics, counter that wealth taxes historically yield minimal net revenue due to high administrative costs, valuation disputes, and behavioral responses such as asset relocation or reduced risk-taking, as evidenced by the repeal of such taxes in countries like Sweden (2007) and France (2017), where emigrants and capital outflows exceeded projections. Analyses suggest that even modest wealth levies distort savings and entrepreneurship by taxing unrealized gains, potentially lowering the capital stock and GDP growth by 0.2-1% over time, with empirical studies showing elasticities of taxable income to wealth taxes around 0.2-0.8, implying significant deadweight losses. In France, proposals akin to Zucman's, targeting assets over €100 million, have been projected to prompt tax flight among high-net-worth individuals, exacerbating fiscal deficits rather than resolving them, as seen in post-IFI emigration trends. Regarding the global minimum of 15% under Pillar Two, which Zucman has supported and analyzed, simulations indicate annual revenue gains of $60-100 billion for low-tax jurisdictions by repatriating shifted profits, reducing distortions from profit-shifting estimated at 10-20% of global corporate profits. However, opponents highlight risks of increased compliance burdens, potential pass-through of costs to consumers via higher prices, and diminished in high-tax countries, with general equilibrium models showing welfare losses from reduced multinational efficiency, particularly in developing economies reliant on tax competition. Zucman maintains that these reforms enhance by limiting tax competition's race-to-the-bottom dynamics, but from early implementations remains limited as of 2025, with debates ongoing over whether revenue boosts offset incentives for further base erosion via non-taxed channels like intragroup financing.

Personal life

Citizenship and residences

Gabriel Zucman holds dual citizenship in and the . He was born in , , on June 26, 1986. Zucman maintains academic appointments that reflect transatlantic professional residences: he serves as a Chaired Professor of Economics at the in , , and as an Associate Professor of Economics at the , in . His dual roles indicate he divides time between these locations, though primary residence details remain private.

Family background

Gabriel Zucman was born in in 1986 to two physicians. His mother works as a researcher in , while his father specializes in treating patients. Zucman grew up in comfortable, well-off circumstances in , attending prestigious schools during his early education. Little public information exists regarding extended family origins or ancestry, with Zucman himself sharing minimal details about his private life beyond these parental professions.

References

  1. https://www.icrict.com/commission/gabriel-zucman/
  2. https://gabriel-zucman.eu/
  3. https://econ.berkeley.edu/profile/gabriel-zucman
  4. https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/honors-awards/bates-clark/gabriel-zucman
  5. https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/Zucman2019.pdf
  6. https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/SaezZucman2020JEP.pdf
  7. https://www.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/en/persons/gabriel-zucman/
  8. https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/CV.pdf
  9. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-05-23/the-wealth-detective-who-finds-the-hidden-money-of-the-super-rich
  10. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/m-le-mag/article/2025/09/17/who-is-gabriel-zucman-billionaires-nightmare_6745492_117.html
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  14. https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/faculty/gabriel-zucman
  15. https://cepr.org/about/people/gabriel-zucman
  16. https://www.nber.org/people/gabriel_zucman
  17. https://ls.berkeley.edu/stone-center-leadership-and-faculty-affiliates
  18. https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/AJZ2019.pdf
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  20. https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/GLRRZ2023.pdf
  21. https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/report-g20.pdf
  22. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047272722001876
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  24. https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-zucmanNBER14wealth.pdf
  25. https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/Alvaredoetal2020.pdf
  26. https://www.nber.org/papers/w30396
  27. https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/SZ2022NBER.pdf
  28. https://academic.oup.com/restud/article/90/3/1499/6650134
  29. https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/TWZ2021.pdf
  30. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30673/w30673.pdf
  31. https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/66119/1/Zucman_Taxing%2520across%2520Borders.pdf
  32. https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/WZ2022WIDER.pdf
  33. https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/GBJZ2022.pdf
  34. https://www.taxobservatory.eu/publication/a-blueprint-for-a-coordinated-minimum-effective-taxation-standard-for-ultra-high-net-worth-individuals/
  35. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/progressive-wealth-taxation/
  36. https://www.warren.senate.gov/download/saez-zucman-wealthtax
  37. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2025/09/23/zucman-tax-what-the-proposed-wealth-tax-would-mean-for-france_6745653_8.html
  38. https://www.politico.eu/article/gabriel-zucman-economist-france-wealth-tax/
  39. https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/BCNZ2022.pdf
  40. https://gabriel-zucman.eu/policy-debates/
  41. https://inequality.org/article/a-practical-prescription-for-taxing-our-worlds-richest/
  42. https://www.carnegie.org/awards/honoree/gabriel-zucman/
  43. https://www.kielinstitut.de/institute/events/prizes-and-awards/excellence-awards-in-global-economic-affairs/excellence-awards-in-global-economic-affairs-2017/
  44. https://www.carnegie.org/awards/andrew-carnegie-fellows/2021/
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  46. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2024/1/11/23984135/inequality-auten-splinter-piketty-saez-zucman-tax-data
  47. https://www.davidsplinter.com/AutenSplinter-2024-ReplyToPSZ.pdf
  48. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28542/w28542.pdf
  49. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w25462/w25462.pdf
  50. https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/Zucman2013QJE.pdf
  51. https://www.econlib.org/american-economics-association-reaches-a-new-low/
  52. https://taxfoundation.org/blog/emmanuel-saez-gabriel-zucman-triumph-of-injustice/
  53. http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/PSZ2018QJE.pdf
  54. https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/SZ2022AEA.pdf
  55. https://www.piie.com/commentary/op-eds/great-wealth-tax-debate
  56. https://www.taxobservatory.eu/publication/2938/
  57. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272722001116
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