HHEI's 2025 Fall Roundtable Event

Fall 2025 Roundtable Event

The public debate over taxing the rich remains deeply divided, raising important questions about whether top earners are engines of economic growth or drivers of inequality and undue influence. While research has explored these competing theories, measuring their real-world effects has proven difficult. Recent empirical research using data from the U.S. and Scandinavia is beginning to offer clearer insights, including evidence that top earners may have net positive impacts on firms, workers, and wages. This event will explore recent findings and remaining questions about how wealth taxation can be designed in light of these complex dynamics.

Join us for an engaging roundtable discussion on one of today's most debated economic policy topics. This event brings together leading experts to explore the potential benefits, challenges, and implications of wealth taxation in contemporary economic systems. Moderated by MPR News and Marketplace host Chris Farrell. A reception will follow the event.

Guest Speaker 

Florian Scheuer is the UBS Professor of Economics of Institutions at the University of Zurich. He was previously on the faculty at Stanford University, held visiting positions at Harvard and UC Berkeley and was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He obtained his PhD in Economics from MIT in 2010. His research centers on the policy implications of rising inequality, with a focus on tax policy. In particular, he has worked on incorporating important features of real-world labor and financial markets into the design of optimal income and wealth taxes. These include economies with rent-seeking, superstar effects, entrepreneurship, asset price fluctuations and capital gains. His work has been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Review of Economic Studies, among other journals. He is Director of the Review of Economic Studies, a member of the Board of Editors of the American Economic Review, and was Co-Editor of Theoretical Economics from 2018 to 2022. He is also Co-Director of the Working Group on Macro Public Finance at the NBER. He has commented on tax policy in various US and Swiss media outlets.

Recent Research 

University of Minnesota Speaker 

Kjetil Storesletten, Department of Economics

Recent Publications