Proposals to tax top wealth (e.g., Saez and Zucman, 2019) face a recurring objection in public debate: that the wealthy will emigrate en masse and, because many are entrepreneurs, their departure will …
Online FirstQuarterly Journal of EconomicsOnline 4 Sep 2026
Wealth data for the nineteenth-century United States barely exist, and this paper builds them from an unusual source: the paper trail of the General Property Tax, a levy that — unlike land taxes …