Max Longmuir, who joined the Stone Center as a postdoctoral scholar this fall, researches questions of distributional economics, household finance, intergenerational mobility, and labor economics. He grew up in Trier, the oldest city in Germany, and went on to study international economics and public policy as an undergraduate. After receiving his Ph.D. in economics from the Freie Universität Berlin, where he focused on inequality, risk, and wealth, he completed a postdoc at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Longmuir recently spoke to the Stone Center about his path toward inequality studies, his work on The GC Wealth Project, and his research.
How did you first become interested in socio-economic inequality?
Longmuir: I was not a great student at times. In high school, it wasn’t really a question of which university I would go to, but of whether I would finish school at all. And when I thought about it later, I realized that things turned around for me because I had very good social support, a strong community I could rely on — a family that supported me, and teachers who really took their time. Later in my studies, I realized that people who maybe went through the same thing as I did and didn’t have that kind of social support, maybe they wouldn’t even finish school. And here I was able to finish a Ph.D. in economics.
When I decided to study economics, I wanted to learn a bit more about these kinds of issues, these socio-economic differences. I found a very good research community in Berlin that looked into income and wealth inequality, and I joined them as a student assistant and stayed with them until the end of that postdoc this summer.
What projects do you plan to work on during your time at the Stone Center?
Longmuir: My work started as a kind of a snapshot perspective on wealth, learning about the wealth distribution, and how we measure it. And questions of how we compare countries like Australia, the U.S., and Germany. In the U.S. and also in Australia, there’s a strong private saving scheme, supported by tax advantages, which are typically included in the kind of survey data we draw our information from. But in Germany, there’s a huge public pension scheme, and wealth from that doesn’t really show up. You pay into it and you earn points and you get quite a payout at the end, but that doesn’t really show up in most available data. So my colleagues in Berlin and I worked on including pension wealth, making that comparable.
I’m also drawn to dynamic perspectives on wealth, and looking into how accumulation processes work — meaning, not just a snapshot, but looking over life cycles and seeing what may prevent people from accumulating wealth, and how that’s related to labor economics issues. You can follow people through different stages in their lives and see how they save or invest, or if they save or invest at all, and focus on the determinants of these accumulation processes, and why they differ, and how that affects the wealth distribution.
This needs very specific data — wealth data from people at different times in their lives. So far I’ve looked at different countries in Europe. I’m planning to work on this also in the U.S. One aspect I’m planning to work on with Manuel, for example, relates to stable employment, and how your labor market history relates to your ability to accumulate wealth. The theory is, of course, that if people tend to have less stable work relationships, it might be difficult for them to accumulate wealth and to transition into homeownership.
I’m also working on the GC Wealth Project. I’m specifically responsible, with others, for the Wealth Topography section, but there’s also Wealth Inequality Trends and Estate, Inheritance, and Gift Taxes, and there will be a section on Inheritance Trends, which will be fun to build up. I’m an applied microeconomist, kind of a data nerd, and I’m really happy to be collecting data and visualizing it. I got introduced to the project a couple of years ago by Salvatore Morelli — he saw my posts on Twitter and it was the height of the pandemic and we had a Zoom call. He showed me the very early stages of the project, and I think it’s amazing how far it has come and how much effort people before me put into it. I feel quite honored that I’m allowed to continue that process.
You’d never visited New York before moving here to join the Stone Center. What are you most looking forward to during your time here?
In the next two years, I’m hoping to move forward on my projects, and get them out. And I hope to get to know this research community here in New York City. It’s a big shift from after almost ten years in Berlin to come to New York City and get to know the community here, and to connect with the U.S. system. I am also always very keen to expand my research network. New York City is a great place for offering many amazing research seminars and events, which would be enough to fill almost every week. I also have personal and professional ties to Australia. In 2024, I am planning an academic visit there and will visit several economic departments and research institutes.
Personally, I like exploring New York City with my family during the weekend. I would like to see upstate New York, and to visit other cities and the amazing national parks that the U.S. has to offer.