AI review of the research of Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman

An AI-generated audit of 138 works by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman (2011–2026) reports 53 major defects and 94 contested modelling choices across 43 works with at least one major defect, with 72% of 5,110 reproduction checks matching the published figure. The review says no finding was severe enough to overturn a paper's core result outright, though headline magnitudes often do not survive, and that findings overwhelmingly point toward weaker claims (96% of directional defects, 98% of contested choices). It notes the audit was instructed to look for flaws and that a comparable pipeline run on free-market economists and Hoover Institution papers produced a similar tilt.