Saez wins AEA prize for tax paper

Emmanuel Saez, the E. Morris Cox Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley, has been named by the American Economic Association  as recipient of the AEA’s  first American Economic Journal: Economic Policy “Best Paper Prize,” for his “Do Taxpayers Bunch at Kink Points?”

The work by Saez explores kink points in the federal income tax schedule that reveal taxpayer response patterns. It was published in the journal’s August 2010 issue and is available free online at http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/pol.2.3.180.

His work focuses on the dynamics of income inequality, capital income taxation, behavioral responses to taxation, optimal income taxation, social insurance and retirement plan decisions.

Saez teaches courses at UC Berkeley on topics relating to inequality, public economics and mathematics for economists. He also is the director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Equitable Growth (http://ceg.berkeley.edu).

Other recognition for Saez has come in the form of a 2010 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and 2009 John Bates Clark Medal, which is given annually to the economist in the United States under the age of 40 who has made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge.

The AEA’s newly established prize highlights the best paper published in each of the American Economic Journals: Applied Economics, Economic Policy, Macroeconomics, and Microeconomics over the last three years. Nominations were provided by AEA members, and winners were selected by the editors, co-editors and associate editors of each of the journals. More information can be found at www.vanderbilt.edu/AEA.