Wealth is highly concentrated among a few very rich individuals. The usual models of wealth transmission offer life-cycle and family motives for bequests. The hypothesis here is that those motives are not likely to be active for very rich individuals. Using a sample of french estate records...

This paper proposes different tests of the life cycle hypothesis, concerning the determinants of household portfolio choices. The theoretical approach is based upon the intertemporal portfolio choice model and focuses on market imperfections and the following duality of needs: lifecycle...