The Atlantic explores how Stone Center co-directors Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman's pioneering inequality research sparked an intense academic controversy—and why their work continues to transform politics and policy.
The article positions Stone Center co-directors as the pioneering economists whose work "transformed domestic politics" and convinced President Obama that inequality was "the defining issue of our time." When rival researchers challenged their findings, Saez and Zucman didn't just defend their methodology—they advanced it, with Zucman's latest research revealing that tax evasion by the wealthy is even higher than previously measured. Their work doesn't just produce academic papers—it fundamentally reshapes how presidents, policymakers, and the public understand economic inequality.