Gabriel Zucman: Winner of the 2023 Clark Medal

Abstract

The 2023 John Bates Clark Medal of the American Economic Association was awarded to Gabriel Zucman, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, for his fundamental contributions to the study of inequality and taxation. Through meticulous empirical work and creative methodological approaches, Gabriel has revealed key trends about the concentration of global wealth, the size and distribution of tax evasion, and the tax-saving strategies of multinational companies. These findings have had a profound impact on the academic literature and on global policy debates. Methodologically, his work has contributed to reviving a centuries-long empirical tradition in the social sciences—pioneered long-ago by the likes of Gregory King and William Petty, and then in the twentieth century by Richard Stone and Simon Kuznets—that attempts to shed light on core economic and political issues through the creation of new measurement systems, which are sophisticated without being wedded to a unique theoretical perspective. In reviving this tradition, Gabriel has shifted the way contemporary economic research is done by showing that measurement can have a large impact in our field and on the world, inspiring many younger scholars to follow in his footsteps.