"The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. This paper provides a non-technical overview of the economic arguments related to the desirability of transfer taxation and a summary of...

We model denial of death and its effect on economic behavior. Attempts to reduce death anxiety and the possibility of denial of mortality-relevant information interact with intertemporal choices and may lead to time-inconsistent behavior and other “behavioral” phenomena. In the model,...

I discuss available evidence about the evolution of top wealth shares in the United States over the course of the 20th century. The three main approaches—the Survey of Consumer Finances, estate tax multiplier, and capitalization methods—generate generally consistent findings until mid-1980s...