Ce texte presente quelques elements pour une economie des generations, autour de trois debats. Le premier, normatif, concerne la responsabilite des contemporains a l'egard de leurs successeurs : peut compter sur l'altruisme des individus pour leur descendance, ou l'Etat doit-il representer les...

This paper has considered the dynamics of financial portfolio choice by French households, using data from the ECHP over the period 1994-2001. The panel data allow us to test a number of theoretical predictions which are difficult to analyse with cross-section data: life cycle effects,...

This paper uses historical data from the "3000 familles" survey, covering individuals in the Lower Loire departement in the 19th and early 20th century, to measure the intergenerational transmission of wealth inequality over the period 1800-1938. Our results reveal a large degree of...

Only few empirical studies of intergeneration transfers using historical data have considered the period when the State intervened relatively little in family life and when financial institutions were far less- developed than they are today. This paper uses historical data from the "3 000...