This paper aims at investigating whether or not a utilitarian social planner should subsidize longevity-enhancing expenditures in an economy with a PAYG pension system. For that purpose, a simple two-period OLG model is developed, in which the length of the second period of life can be raised by...

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...

This paper studies the design of the optimal linear taxation of bequests when individuals differ in wage as well as in their risks of both mortality and old-age dependence. We assume that the government cannot distinguish between bequests motives, that is whether bequests resulted from...