Gabriel Zucman wins John Bates Clark Medal for 2023

UC Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman has been awarded the John Bates Clark Medal for 2023 by the American Economic Association for his research on tax avoidance and economic inequality.

The medal recognizes economists under the age of 40, and several past winners have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.

In a statement announcing the award the association noted Zucman’s “entrepreneurial and creative pursuit of new data and methods for economic measurement” in uncovering the importance of tax evasion and measuring the rise of top income and wealth inequality.

Zucman is the co-director of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Wealth and Income Inequality at Berkeley. He joined the Berkeley faculty in 2015 and is currently on leave from the university, working at Ecole Normale Supérieure–PSL in Paris and the Paris School of Economics, where he received his Ph.D. in 2013.

Zucman is the fourth current faculty member in Berkeley’s economics department to win the Clark Medal.

Commenting on the award, Zucman said: “I’m very grateful for this honor. Most importantly, I’m grateful for the colleagues, the students, the co-authors and the mentors who have worked with me over the years. Research is really a collaborative process, and none of this research would have been possible without all of them.”