Owen Zidar

Overview

Owen Zidar is an economist identified by Middlegarchs are the new Oligarchs as a coauthor of research connecting private businesses, their owners, and the growth of top incomes.

Current Profile

The episode places Zidar in a three-economist team with Eric Zwick and Danny Yagan. Their linked tax-record work is presented as closing a data gap that had obscured how much rising top income came from pass-through businesses in ordinary industries.

Key Characteristics

• Researcher on taxation, private business, and income distribution.
• Co-builder of the administrative-data analysis anchoring the episode.
• Contributor to the finding that pass-through income was a major component of top-income growth.

Evidence

Research team:

• Middlegarchs are the new Oligarchs says Zidar worked with Zwick, Yagan, and Treasury economists to link millions of businesses to owners across tax databases.

Substantive finding:

• Middlegarchs are the new Oligarchs attributes to the research team the conclusion that pass-through businesses accounted for more than half of the analyzed growth in income going to the top 1% and 0.1%.

Qualifications

The episode supplies a high-level account rather than a full methodological review. Numerical estimates and industry rankings remain source-scoped.

What Changed

• Created the profile from the episode’s account of the linked tax-record research.

Relationships

• Eric Zwick - Co-researcher and principal interpreter in the episode.
• Danny Yagan - Co-researcher on the private-business analysis.
• Pass-Through Business Tax Advantage - Tax structure used to interpret the team’s distributional findings.
• Dispersed Business-Elite Power - Downstream political-economy synthesis informed by the research.