Following an acrimonious debate regarding estate taxes over the past several years, the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 reforms and cuts estate taxes through 2009, abolishes the tax in 2010, and then reinstates it in 2011. These changes make the taxation of transfers...

In the forthcoming decades the industrialized countries will experience a demographic transition that is unprecedented in history. While the transition's impact on public pension schemes has extensively been examined, its implication for private intergenerational transfers has gone almost...

Das Konzept einer redistributiven Sozialpolitik scheint schon seit längerem in Deutschland an seine Grenzen gestoßen zu sein: Die durchgehend mit einer erheblichen Umverteilungskomponente versehenen sozialen Sicherungssysteme haben einerseits zu unerträglichen Belastungen insbesondere der...

Purchasing life insurance is for the welfare of young children, particularly preteens, who are liquidity constrained. In this paper, we present a life cycle model of life insurance that takes into account the ages of these young beneciaries. We show that, as the child ages, the need for...

This study was developed as a volunteer effort by the Estate Tax Repeal Task Force of the Trust, Estate, and Gift Tax Technical Resource Panel (TRP) and approved by the Tax Executive Committee of the Tax Division of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. The study first...

In this paper, we evaluate and critique ten principal claims made in recent debates on the estate tax, distinguishing five types of statements: facts, rhetoric, value judgments, economic reasoning, and informed speculation. Economics cannot fully resolve policy debats because economic knowledge...

This paper investigates the effect of wealth taxation on economic growth using an endogenous growth model with the altruistic bequest motive. We introduce intragenerational productivity differentials of human capital formation, resulting in differences of growth rates among individuals. The...