This paper explores the behavioral response of taxable bequests to estate taxation. To gauge its effects, the estate tax is converted to an equivalent income tax. This highlights the importance of expected rates of return, and also makes it possible to compare effective tax rates on saving over...

Social assistance and inactivity traps have long been considered amongst the main causes of the poor employment performance of EU countries. The success of New Labour has triggered a growing interest in instruments capable of combining the promotion of responsibility and self-sufficiency with...

Evans (1991) has demonstrated that Blanchard`s (1985) finite-horizon model obeys approximate Ricardian equivalence. We show that this result is determined largely by an unrealistic assumption that labor income grows monotonically over a consumer`s entire lifetime. Introducing more realistic...

This paper analyzes anew the relationship between taxation and the household saving rate. On the basis of standard savings and tax revenue data from OECD countries, it provides compelling and robust empirical evidence of a powerful impact of taxes on household savings. In particular, income...

The paper discusses a number of threats to the financial sustainability of social spending: increased internationalization of national economies, gradually higher relative costs of producing a number of human services, the quot;grayingquot; of the population, slower productivity growth in the...

This paper analyses some fiscal aspects of mortgage debt in the EU. It first describes the main fiscal instruments that governments use to affect mortgage-financed home-ownership. In the empirical part, real mortgage debt growth is analysed for 15 EU countries using pooled regressions. Fiscal...

By comparing 401(k) eligible and ineligible households' wealth, this paper estimates that, on average, about one half of 401(k) balances represent new private savings, and about one quarter of 401(k) balances represent new national savings. Responses to eligibility vary considerably, however,...

This paper develops dynamic structural models - an option value model and a dynamic programming model - of the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) application timing decision. We estimate the time to application from the point at which a health condition first begins to affect the kind...

Motivated by the EU Commission's suggested company tax reforms, this paper investigates how cross-border loss offset and formulary apportionment of a consolidated tax base affect the investment and transfer pricing behaviour of a multijurisdictional firm, and how they affect the behaviour of...