Meet The Team
Acknowledgements, from GC Wealth Project Director Salvatore Morelli
The project underwent approximately five years of development before its launch, and many individuals contributed to varying degrees, during multiple stages, and to different sections of the project. First, the project would not exist without the continuous, reliable, and professional support of the Stone Center, including its director Janet Gornick, and the staff, Carolyn Fisher, Mei-Ling Israel, Jennifer Kitses, Veronica Ordaz, and Saraya McPherson. I also acknowledge the support from the Law Department of the University of Roma Tre, including the director Antonio Carratta, as well as the admin staff Giuseppina Santilli, Alessia Cantarella, Federico Melograno, and Michele Sancioni. The organizational and communication support from Ylenia Sina is also acknowledged. Facundo Alvaredo, Charlotte Bartels, Yonatan Berman, Miles Corak, Philipp Erfurth, Josep Espasa Reig, Giacomo Gabbuti, Janet Gornick, Demetrio Guzzardi, Elena Granaglia, Joe Hasell, Roberto Iacono, Rama Dasi Mariani, Leslie McCall, Branko Milanovic, Teresa Munzi, Jorg Neugschwender, Brian Nolan, Juan Palomino, Piotr Paradowski, Alberto Pozzolo, Marco Ranaldi, Antonio Scialà, and Philippe Van Kerm provided invaluable feedback.
Salvatore Morelli is the GC Wealth Project Director and provided the initiative for the construction of the database. Since the very beginning, he is leading the project, and coordinates the development, expansion and refinement of the dataset.
Regarding the Wealth Topography database, Goncalo Costa conceptualized the database and initiated the data-gathering effort. Giacomo Rella led the development of the Wealth Topography database, followed by Max Longmuir. Both worked on the conceptualization, design of the data architecture, the national accounting mapping, the automation of data gathering, and the design of the detailed metadata complementing the database. Severin Rapp is now leading the Topgraphy section and overseeing the future expansion of the section. We thank Ana Rojas Silvero for providing essential support in collecting and systematizing raw data sources on household balance sheets. Our thanks also go to Marco Ranaldi, Yaoqi Lin, and Pranabes Probeshika Dutta for their support with the initial data gathering.
For the Wealth Inequality Trends section, Frincasco Di Biase and Ercio Muñoz carried out the foundational work by gathering the initial dataset. Franziska Disslbacher oversaw the development of the Wealth Inequality Trends database in 2022 and part of 2023, and contributed to the establishment of automation processes. In 2023 Matteo Targa took over Franziska’s role and developed a quality management routine. In collaboration with Ignacio and Franziska, Matteo created the estimates of wealth inequality trends series using cross-national survey databases. Finally, Matteo is responsible for the management, update, expansion, and streamlining process of the inequality trends section. The development of methodological tables to supplement the inequality trends series was carried out by Salvatore Morelli, with great assistance from Frincasco Di Biase, Franziska Disslbacher, and Matteo Targa. We are indebted to Tony Shorrocks for sharing Credit Suisse data. Adam Rego Johnson had a pivotal role in establishing compilation standards and manuals. He also contributed significantly through editing, proofreading, and classifying the tables. Adam had a pivotal role in the reference management and the creation of the Digital Library of Research on Wealth Inequality and the Data Sources Library. Early contributions from Carolyn Fisher, Ian Haberman, Twisha Asher, and subsequent work by Franziska Disslbacher, were important in completing and optimizing the structure of the methodological tables, as well as providing details for specific sources. Thanks also to Philipp Erfurth for his valuable feedback during the early stages of the process.
The Estate, Inheritance, and Gift (EIG) Taxes section was fundamentally shaped by Twisha Asher, who collected and classified tax policy specifications and researched a wealth of data on wealth transfer taxation. She also played a decisive role in supporting the design and documentation of the EIG database structure. Manuel Schechtl made further important contributions, assuming oversight of the EIG database from December 2022 through July 2024. Collaborating with Twisha Asher and Ignacio Flores, Manuel Schechtl contributed to improving the code that assembles the database and streamlining the data collection. Twisha Asher, together with Manuel Schechtl, also supervised several outstanding research assistants: Mei Li, Nolan Lyons, Yue Pan, Alex Parton, Sarah Russo, Jack Shea, and Tsu Zhu. Francesca Subioli (early 2023) and Luca Giangregorio (late 2023) started to work with Manuel on the supervision and the development of the tax section. They improved the coding structure, implemented a completely new and more efficient architecture of the EIG section, and laid the groundwork for the future database expansion. Moreover, they supervised Martino Kuntze, Ali Jehanzaib, and Ghulam Shabir, who did excellent work in supporting the systematization of data in relevant sources and debugging. Josemaria Loria and Margherita Di Chiacchio made further valuable contributions to the Estate, Inheritance, and Gift (EIG) Taxes section as research assistants.
Ignacio Flores had a crucial role in supervising the overall architecture of the data warehouse. His oversight was vital for the integration of different elements of the data warehouse, such that the data is cohesively and logically structured.