Gabriel Zucman | |
|---|---|
.jpg) | |
| Born | (1986-10-30)30 October 1986 (age 39) Paris, France |
| Spouse | Claire Montialoux |
| Academic background | |
| Education | École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay (BSc) Paris School of Economics (MSc,PhD) |
| Doctoral advisor | Thomas Piketty |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Public economics |
| Institutions | Paris School of Economics University of California, Berkeley London School of Economics EU Tax Observatory |
| Notable ideas | Tax avoidance Base erosion and profit shifting Tax havens |
| Awards | Best Young Economist of France (2018) John Bates Clark Medal (2023) |
| Website | |
Gabriel Zucman (French pronunciation:[ɡabʁijɛlzykman]; born 30 October 1986) is a Frencheconomist known for his expertise on tax havens. He has been a chaired professor at theParis School of Economics since 2023,[1] Summer Research Professor of Economics at theUniversity of California, Berkeley'sGoldman School of Public Policy,[2] and the director of theEU Tax Observatory in Paris.[3]
Zucman has argued for aglobal wealth tax oncentimillionaires and richerhigh-net-worth individuals.[4][5]
The author ofThe Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens (2015), Zucman is known for his research ontax havens andcorporate tax havens.[6][7][8]
Zucman's research has found that the leading corporate tax havens are allOECD–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 thequantification of thefinancial scale ofbase erosion and profit shifting (BEPS)tax avoidance techniques employed bymultinationals in corporate tax havens,[10][11] through which he identifiedIreland as the world's largest corporate tax haven, based on profit-shifting measures, in 2018.[12]
In 2018, Zucman was the recipient of thePrize for the Best Young Economist in France, awarded by theCercle des économistes andLe Monde in recognition of his research on tax evasion and avoidance and their economic consequences.[13] He was awarded theJohn Bates Clark Medal in 2023, a prize for economists under the age of 40.[14]
Zucman was born inParis in 1986, and is the son of two French doctors. His mother is an immunology researcher while his father treatsHIV patients.[15]
In interviews, Zucman has described the "traumatic political event of my youth" as being whenJean-Marie Le Pen reached the final rounds of the2002 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 theÉcole normale supérieure de Cachan, one of France's prestigiousGrandes Écoles.[16] Hereafter, he first earned his M.Sc. in economic policy analysis in 2008 and a PhD in economics in 2013, both from theSchool for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) and theParis School of Economics. His PhD dissertation, under the supervision of Thomas Piketty, explored whether the wealthy left France due to its wealth tax.[17] The dissertation received the French Economic Association's award for best PhD dissertation in 2014.
After finishing his studies, Zucman worked for a year as a postdoctoral scholar at theUniversity of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley) before accepting a position as assistant professor of economics at theLondon School of Economics (LSE) and the same position at UC Berkeley, being currently on leave from LSE. Moreover, Zucman has worked as co-director ofthe 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.[18]
Besides his research and teaching activities, Zucman has refereed for several economic journals, including theQuarterly Journal of Economics, theReview of Economic Studies,Econometrica, and theJournal of Political Economy. He also co–founded and acted as editor–in–chief forRegards croisés sur l'économie, a review aimed at exposing the French general public to academic research in economics.[16][15]
In 2019, the faculty at the HarvardKennedy School of Government voted to offer Zucman a tenured position in the department, but the president and provost of Harvard University blocked it.[19]
Zucman is the founding director of theEU Tax Observatory, an independent research laboratory hosted by the Paris School of Economics.[20][3]
In 2023, he was elected as a "professeur des universités" (tenured professor) in the department of economics at theEcole normale supérieure and at theParis School of Economics.[21]
In 2025, France'sSocialist Party endorsed a proposal by Zucman for a 2% wealth tax targeting the top 0.01% of wealth holders in the 2026 national budget.[22]
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 ofeconomic inequality. Zucman himself says, "a lot of my work is about trying to improve our measurement tools."[24]
In August 2014 inCapital is Back, Zucman and French economistThomas 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.[25] Zucman has co-written several papers withThomas Piketty.[15]
A second focus is his research on tax havens.[15] In his 2015 bookThe 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.[26]
In 2017–18, Zucman focused on the scale of multinational tax avoidance bybase erosion and profit shifting ("BEPS") tools in the largestcorporate tax havens.[15] Zucman believes Ireland, recognised as a majorcorporate 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 corporateConduit OFC).[27] 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.[28]
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.[29] In his book, he used systematic anomalies in international investment positions to showcase hidden offshore wealth.[30] 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.[31] 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.[32][33] His key findings were that 8% of global financial wealth is held offshore, roughly $7.6 trillion.[34] This finding laid the groundwork for his advocacy of the global wealth tax through the EU Tax Observatory and the G20 Summit.[35] His estimates are now used in debates about global tax transparency and have contributed to shifting tax evasion into mainstream economic and political debate. While his estimates have been widely influential, some economists have noted the difficulty of precisely measuring highly mobile and hard to find financial assets, and therefore state that offshore wealth may fluctuate with regulatory and financial changes.[36][37]
Along withJames R. Hines Jr. andDhammika Dharmapala, Gabriel Zucman is noted as a leader in the study of tax havens,[38] and his papers are amongst the most cited research on tax havens.[9] As of October 2018[update], Zucman ranks 1st out of "19,829 economists whose first publication of any kind is 10 or fewer years ago", on the IDEAS/RePEc St Louis Reserve database of papers by global economists.[39]
Much of Zucman's other research deals with the effect of theG20's crackdown on tax havens and corporate tax havens, cross–border taxation and multinational profit shifting, the long–term relationship between wealth and inheritance, and the trajectory of wealth inequality in the United States. Zucman's research and commentary have been cited by international news outlets such as The New York Times and The Guardian.[40][11][41][15]
The only tax havens from the Tørsløv-Wier-Zucman list that have ever appeared on an OECD list of tax havens, are some Caribbean locations, namely The British Virgin Islands (but not theCayman Islands).[42] Nine of the top ten locations from the Tørsløv-Wier-Zucman list, match the top ten on theJames R. Hines 2010 list (assuming that Zucman's "Caribbean" is mostly two locations, theCayman Islands and theBritish Virgin Islands; Zucman listsBermuda separately).
| Zucman Tax Haven | Rank by Profit Shifted | Corporate Profits ($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 byJames R. Hines Jr. in 2010 (theHines 2010 List).[43]
(†) Identified as one of the 5Conduits (Ireland, Singapore, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom), by CORPNET in 2017.[44]
(‡) Identified as one of the largest 5Sinks (British Virgin Islands, Luxemburg, Hong Kong, Jersey, Bermuda), by CORPNET in 2017.[44]
(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.[42]
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.[45] Specifically, he has supported a 2% wealth tax on those with wealth above €100 million.[46] 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.[47] According to one analysis cited by Zucman, billionaires paid on the order of only ~0.3% of their wealth per year in total tax.[47] 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.[48]
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.[45] His proposal for a global minimum tax on billionaires was discussed by theG20 ahead of the 2024 summit.[49]
Zucman is married to the French economist Claire Montialoux, whom he met in 2006.[15]
Tax Havens by Most Cited
Such profit shifting leads to a total annual revenue loss of $200 billion globally
New Gabriel Zucman study claims State shelters more multinational profits than the entire Caribbean
Figure D: Tax Haven Literature Review: A Typology
The rankings: Top 200 Economists (10 years or less) Taken from a pool of 19829 economists whose first publication of any kind is 10 or fewer years ago. These rankings consider only the youngest economists registered with RePEc. Young is defined by the year of the first publication in any form. Note that the shorter the time span considered, the more likely the ranking is going to be spurious.
TAX HAVENS: 1.Andorra 2.Anguilla 3.Antigua and Barbuda 4.Aruba 5.Bahamas 6.Bahrain 7.Barbados 8.Belize 9.British Virgin Islands 10.Cook Islands 11.Dominica 12.Gibraltar 13.Grenada 14.Guernsey 15.Isle of Man 16.Jersey 17.Liberia 18.Liechtenstein 19.Maldives 20.Marshall Islands 21.Monaco 22.Montserrat 23.Nauru 24.Net Antilles 25.Niue 26.Panama 27.Samoa 28.Seychelles 29.St. Lucia 30.St. Kitts & Nevis 31.St. Vincent and the Grenadines 32.Tonga 33.Turks & Caicos 34.U.S. Virgin Islands 35.Vanuatu
Table 1: 52 Tax Havens
