The working mechanism of national fiscal rules depends strongly on whether a government must comply with its own rules or inherited ones. In the former case, a government usually introduces fiscal rules to show its commitment to a disciplined fiscal policy (the signaling function). In the latter...

Longer term exposure to high poverty neighbourhoods can affect individual socio-economic outcomes later in life. Previous research has shown strong path dependence in individual neighbourhood histories. A growing literature shows that the neighbourhood histories of people is linked to the...

While little agreement exists regarding the taxation of bequests in general, there is a widely held view that accidental bequests should be subject to a confiscatory tax. We propose to reexamine the optimal taxation of accidental bequests in an economy where individuals care about what they...

The estate tax and income tax rules independently attempt to either promote or deter different behaviors. The interaction of these different rules often leads to disparate or unintended consequences to taxpayers: for example, achieving an overall lower effective tax rate by paying more estate...

This paper analyzes the determinants of the wealth decumulation behavior of the retired elderly in Japan using unique information from two household surveys, and by so doing, attempts to assess the relative importance of precautionary saving and bequest motives in explaining the lower than...

This paper uses SOEP data to study the distributional effect of intergenerational transfers on the wealth distribution of German households. Similar to most other central European countries, Germany is likely to face a period of increasing aggregate bequest flows. At the same time, there is an...