The objective of this essay is to study to what extent parents divide their estates unequally between their children and the determinants of this decision. We use a new dataset based on the estate reports for almost 70,000 Swedish widows, widowers, divorcees and unmarried individuals who died...

Does taxation affect the timing of death? This is important as an example of how behavior might be affected by economic incentives. We study how three changes in Swedish inheritance taxation 2004-2005 have affected daily all-cause mortality. Our first main result is that mortality decreased by...

The objective of this paper is to study to what extent parents divide their estates unequally between their children. Unequal sharing of parental transfers is, for example, a necessary condition for theories of altruistic (dynastic) behavior to hold. I use a new data set based on the estate...

The objective of this paper is to empirically study if and to what extent people legally reduce their tax payments. There are few empirical studies of tax avoidance although avoidance may seriously affect the possibilities to raise tax revenue. I use a sample of Swedish siblings receiving...

To what extent do people avoid taxes on intra-family transfers (bequests and gifts), and how would integration (unification) of the different transfers taxes affect tax avoidance? These issues are important for families and their welfare, as well as for governments and their possibilities of...

The objective of this paper is to study the long term effects of public policy measures for displaced workers. Our focus is on the individuals affected by the cutbacks at the LKAB iron ore mines in northern Sweden in 1983 and the closure of the Uddevalla Shipyard in western Sweden in 1985. These...

This paper has two objectives. The first is to study the revenue from the gift, inheritance, and estate taxes in Sweden during more than a century. The second is to focus on a unique episode during the second half of the 1940s when gifts and gift tax revenue exploded. This episode has never...

This paper reviews four well-known theoretical models of private bequest behavior, notes their differing implications for public policy, and discusses a way of empirically discriminating among them. Then it implements the test with micro data from Sweden (LLS) and the U.S. (PSID). The so-called...

Many comparisons of the performance of public and private producers use a public/private ownership dummy variable to capture cost differences in cross section data. This is appropriate if the producer choice is random. The dummy variable model is, however, logically inconsistent if the producer...

We study the Becker and Lewis (1973) quantity-quality model of children adding an explicit child care time constraint for parents. They can purchase day care or take care of the children themselves. Our results are: (i) If there is a combination of purchased and own care, the effect of income on...