"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...

Tax reforms usually change both tax rates and tax bases. Using a panel of income tax returns spanning the two major U.S. tax reforms of the 1980s and a number of smaller tax law changes, I find that the elasticity of income reported on personal income tax returns depends on the available...

I discuss available evidence about the evolution of top wealth shares in the United States over the last one hundred years. The three main approaches - Survey of Consumer Finances, estate tax multiplier techniques and capitalization method - generate generally consistent findings until mid-1980s...

I consider nonlinear taxation of income and bequests with a joy-of-giving bequest motive and explicitly characterize the estate tax rate structure that maximizes social planner's welfare function. The solution trades off correction of externality from giving and discouraging effort of children...