IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/18792.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Estate Taxation with Altruism Heterogeneity

Author

Listed:
  • Emmanuel Farhi
  • Iván Werning

Abstract

We develop a theory of optimal estate taxation in a model where bequest inequality is driven by differences in parental altruism. We show that a wide range of results are possible, from positive taxes to subsidies, depending on redistributive objectives implicit in the cardinal specification of utility and social welfare functions. We propose a normalization that is helpful in classifying these different possibilities. We isolate cases where the optimal policy bans negative bequests and taxes positive bequests, features present in most advanced countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Emmanuel Farhi & Iván Werning, 2013. "Estate Taxation with Altruism Heterogeneity," NBER Working Papers 18792, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18792
    Note: EFG PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18792.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Emmanuel Farhi & Iván Werning, 2010. "Progressive Estate Taxation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(2), pages 635-673.
    2. Diamond, P. A., 1975. "A many-person Ramsey tax rule," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 335-342, November.
    3. Paul Milgrom & Ilya Segal, 2002. "Envelope Theorems for Arbitrary Choice Sets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(2), pages 583-601, March.
    4. Piketty, Thomas & Saez, Emmanuel, 2012. "A Theory of Optimal Capital Taxation," CEPR Discussion Papers 8946, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. J. A. Mirrlees, 1971. "An Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(2), pages 175-208.
    6. Christopher Connell & Eric Rasmusen, 2012. "Concavifying the Quasiconcave," Working Papers 2012-10, Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Department of Business Economics and Public Policy.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Florian Scheuer & Joel Slemrod, 2020. "Taxation and the Superrich," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 12(1), pages 189-211, August.
    2. Marie‐Louise Leroux & Pierre Pestieau, 2022. "Age‐related taxation of bequests in the presence of a dependency risk," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 24(1), pages 92-119, February.
    3. Marc Fleurbaey & Marie‐Louise Leroux & Pierre Pestieau & Gregory Ponthiere & Stephane Zuber, 2022. "Premature deaths, accidental bequests, and fairness," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 124(3), pages 709-743, July.
    4. Florian Scheuer & Alexander Wolitzky, 2016. "Capital Taxation under Political Constraints," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(8), pages 2304-2328, August.
    5. Garon, Jean-Denis & Paquet, Alain, 2017. "Les enjeux d'efficience et la fiscalité," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 93(3), pages 297-337, Septembre.
    6. Spencer Bastani & Daniel Waldenström, 2020. "How Should Capital Be Taxed?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(4), pages 812-846, September.
    7. Marie‐Louise Leroux & Pierre Pestieau, 2023. "Age‐ and health‐related non‐linear inheritance taxation," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(3), pages 897-912, August.
    8. Max Franks & Ottmar Edenhofer, 2020. "Optimal Redistributive Wealth Taxation When Wealth Is More Than Just Capital," CESifo Working Paper Series 8093, CESifo.
    9. Robin Boadway & Katherine Cuff, 2015. "Tax treatment of bequests when donor benefits are discounted," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 22(4), pages 604-634, August.
    10. Moser, Christian & Olea de Souza e Silva, Pedro, 2019. "Optimal Paternalistic Savings Policies," MPRA Paper 95383, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Thomas Blanchet, 2022. "Uncovering the Dynamics of the Wealth Distribution," Working Papers hal-03865295, HAL.
    12. Spencer Bastani & Daniel Waldenström, 2021. "Perceptions of Inherited Wealth and the Support for Inheritance Taxation," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 88(350), pages 532-569, April.
    13. Stuart Adam & Helen Miller, 2021. "The economic arguments for and against a wealth tax," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 42(3-4), pages 457-483, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Antoine Ferey & Benjamin Lockwood & Dmitry Taubinsky, 2021. "Sufficient Statistics for Nonlinear Tax Systems with General Across-Income Heterogeneity," NBER Working Papers 29582, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Stefanie Stantcheva, 2020. "Dynamic Taxation," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 12(1), pages 801-831, August.
    3. Stiglitz, Joseph E., 2018. "Pareto efficient taxation and expenditures: Pre- and re-distribution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 101-119.
    4. Winfried Koeniger & Julien Prat, 2018. "Human Capital and Optimal Redistribution," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 27, pages 1-26, January.
    5. Winfried Koeniger & Julien Prat, 2018. "Human Capital and Optimal Redistribution," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 27, pages 1-26, January.
    6. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2015. "In Praise of Frank Ramsey's Contribution to the Theory of Taxation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0(583), pages 235-268, March.
    7. Brunner Johann K., 2014. "Die Erbschaftsteuer – Bestandteil eines optimalen Steuersystems?," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 15(3), pages 199-218, October.
    8. Hellwig, Christian & Werquin, Nicolas, 2022. "A Fair Day's Pay for a Fair Day's Work: Optimal Tax Design as Redistributional Arbitrage," TSE Working Papers 22-1284, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Jan 2023.
    9. Facundo Piguillem & Anderson Schneider, 2013. "Heterogeneous Labor Skills, The Median Voter and Labor Taxes," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(2), pages 332-349, April.
    10. Ales, Laurence & Maziero, Pricila, 2016. "Non-exclusive dynamic contracts, competition, and the limits of insurance," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 362-395.
    11. Shenghao Zhu, 2019. "A Becker–Tomes model with investment risk," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 67(4), pages 951-981, June.
    12. Alex Rees-Jones & Dmitry Taubinsky, 2018. "Taxing Humans: Pitfalls of the Mechanism Design Approach and Potential Resolutions," Tax Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(1), pages 107-133.
    13. Jacquet, Laurence & Lehmann, Etienne & Van der Linden, Bruno, 2013. "Optimal redistributive taxation with both extensive and intensive responses," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(5), pages 1770-1805.
    14. Pertti Haaparanta & Ravi Kanbur & Tuuli Paukkeri & Jukka Pirttilä & Matti Tuomala, 2022. "Promoting education under distortionary taxation: equality of opportunity versus welfarism," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(2), pages 281-297, June.
    15. Decerf,Benoit Marie A & Maniquet,François, 2021. "Fair Inheritance Taxation," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9804, The World Bank.
    16. Emmanuel Farhi & Iván Werning, 2010. "Progressive Estate Taxation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(2), pages 635-673.
    17. Anton Kolotilin & Tymofiy Mylovanov & Andriy Zapechelnyuk & Ming Li, 2017. "Persuasion of a Privately Informed Receiver," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85(6), pages 1949-1964, November.
    18. Mikhail Golosov & Luigi Iovino, 2021. "Social Insurance, Information Revelation, and Lack of Commitment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(9), pages 2629-2665.
    19. Florian Scheuer & Alexander Wolitzky, 2016. "Capital Taxation under Political Constraints," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(8), pages 2304-2328, August.
    20. Spencer Bastani & Daniel Waldenström, 2020. "How Should Capital Be Taxed?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(4), pages 812-846, September.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H0 - Public Economics - - General
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:18792. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.