IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/dyncon/v189y2026ics0165188926001041.html

Inheritance, entrepreneurship, and estate taxation

Author

Listed:
  • Guo, Yanran

Abstract

This paper studies the joint roles of inheritance and entrepreneurship in shaping wealth inequality using a heterogeneous agent, general equilibrium overlapping generations model. The analysis is disciplined by new empirical evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances on how inheritances relate to observed wealth among very wealthy households. In the data, among households in the richest 1% of the wealth distribution, only about 6% have received inheritances that account for at least half of their net worth, and more than half report receiving no inheritance at all. When disciplined by these facts, the calibrated model implies that inheritances play only a limited role in generating extreme wealth, even when accounting for their interaction with entrepreneurship. Using the calibrated model, the paper evaluates estate tax reforms and finds that their effects on wealth concentration are smaller than commonly believed.

Suggested Citation

  • Guo, Yanran, 2026. "Inheritance, entrepreneurship, and estate taxation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:dyncon:v:189:y:2026:i:c:s0165188926001041
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jedc.2026.105359
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165188926001041
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jedc.2026.105359?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:dyncon:v:189:y:2026:i:c:s0165188926001041. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jedc .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.