One workshop, two countries, and many new perspectives
A look back at the workshop "Tax Data in a Global Context: Advancing Research on Wealth Inequality," held as part of the networking week between LMU Munich and Stellenbosch University.
Since 2025, the LMU-SU Research Program—a research collaboration between LMU Munich and Stellenbosch University in South Africa—has fostered a culture of exchange and mobility for early-career researchers and professors through joint research and partnership development projects, conferences, and workshops.
To further promote networking, the Networking Week held from June 8–12, 2016, featured the workshop "Global Perspectives on Tax Data: Advancing Wealth Inequality Research" at the ISI, which facilitated diverse perspectives and dialogue on current approaches to inequality research using South African and German tax data.
The following researchers and early-career scholars presented their research approaches:
- Franziska Disselbacher (University of Vienna): "Wealth Inequality Trends around the World"
- Dieter von Fintel (Stellenbosch University): "Combining Tax and Survey Data to Understand the Full Income and Wealth Distribution"
- Álvaro Zúñiga-Cordero (University of Namur): "Distributional National Accounts Costa Rica: Inequality Measures from the National to the Local Level, 2000-2022"
- Donald Moynihan (University of Michigan, Visiting Fellow at CAS): "Public Interest Capacity: The Death of Direct File"
- Jonathan Msoni (Stellenbosch University): "Forgiveness or Loophole? Evaluating the Effect of Zambia´s Tax Amnesty Programme on Compliance"
- Laura Seelkopf (LMU Munich): "Tax Introduction Database, 1750 - 2024"
- Kehinde Medase (Thünen Institute of Rural Studies): "“From social trust to land
justice: Perceived income inequality reduction and support for equal land rights: Evidence from Kenya and Uganda” - Resty Naiga (Makerere University): "Land Use Change and Arising Inequalities in East Africa"
- Felicitas Sommer (Technical University of Munich): "Seeing like a State Register: Data Architectures of Land Ownership and Obscured Spatial Inequality in Germany"
- Rafael Carranza (Pontifical Catholic University of Chile): "Redistribution, Taxes, and Gender Gaps: Evidence from Top Income Adjustments in Chile"
- Michael Kilumelume (Stellenbosch University): "Impact of Firms and Inter-sectoral Structural Change on the Gender Wage Gap"
- Nhat An Trinh (WZB Berlin Social Science Center): "Gender Inequality Using the German Tax Data"
To deepen the collaboration beyond the workshop week, two doctoral candidates from Stellenbosch University, Jonathan Msoni and Michael Kilumelume, are continuing their stay at the ISI, further intensifying the exchange between the two universities.
More information on the workshop is also available on the website of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research.
