Prior to meeting with Professor Emmanuel Saez, I explored the department web page and learned much of his interests lie in the income tax and income inequality fields. I skimmed a specific paper written by Professor Saez entitled “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-1998,” which argues that much of the income inequality observed during the specified period could be attributed to major events that occurred, such as The Great Depression and World War II. My interview with the professor was based on this paper.

 I first asked him about the questions he was trying to answer and why he deemed them significant. In response, Professor Saez told me that his questions were broad and that he explored the topic because many economists have been interested in income inequality over time and its potential explanations. He continued to say that there are two possible explanations: 1) Kuznet’s hypothesis which states that changes in technological progress lead to income inequality; initially, inequality increases because only few people gain from the technology, but when it becomes more readily available, the inequality declines. Professor Saez said that this is an important point to consider because we know that inequality has recently increased due to technological progress. 2) The inequality is not attributed to technology but rather to government regulations and tax effects, etc.

 I continued to ask Professor Saez what data he used to analyze this topic and how he went about obtaining the data. He responded by informing me that he used the high-income group as a dataset, and looked at the share of total income held (the percent of total income that the top share has.) To obtain this information, he looked into long-term data because the Current Population Survey only goes back to the 1960s. He said that the only way to get homogenous long-term data was to use income tax returns as a measure of income levels.  I then continued to ask about his findings, and he told me that it didn’t appear to be Kuznet’s hypothesis because the top shares of income change during major events, like the Great Depression and World War II. He also noted that the recovery of the last 30 years is likely attributed to the decline in income tax rates, and not technological progress.

 My final question for Professor Saez was if he could offer any advice for me towards my thesis topic. He first defined the elements that drive a research process. He said to have a basic topic first and then see what data is available for that broad topic, and only then narrow it down. He stressed that it is not wise to have a really specific topic and then attempt to find data because it is almost impossible to find perfectly applicable data. He finally gave me an alternative topic to consider: evaluate how the economic well-being of Indian immigrants changed over certain decades, and possibly compare different geographic areas. Professor Saez definitely gave me a lot of helpful information and food for thought.