We examine the pattern of inter-vivos transfers and bequests in France, using both administrative records and household surveys. We first present the French institutional and fiscal setting of wealth transmission; then the usual economic models of behaviour, their link to fiscal system and their...

In a prevailing climate of increasing uncertainty (rising risk of unemployment, pension funding problems and unstable family structures), French households have adopted new saving behavior reflected during the nineties, primarily by considerable investment in life insurance products...

Most models of family intergenerational transfers consider only two generations (parents and children) and focus on two motives for parental transfers: altruism and exchange, while assuming almost perfect substitution between inter vivos transfers and bequests. Based upon French evidence, this...

Le debat sur l'avenir des retraites se limite trop souvent a deux acteurs , le marche et l'Etat (et a deux systemes, la repartition et la capitalisation), en oubliant la famille, ou plutot les familles diverses, selon leurs moyens financiers, la pregnance des contraintes de liquidite, mais aussi...

Ce texte presente un questionnaire experimental concernant les comportements face a l'incertain et a l'avenir. Il est pose a un millier d'individus volontaires, tires de l'echantillon de l'enquete "patrimoine 1997" effectue par l'insee. A travers plus de 80 questions balayant divers domaines de...

In a prevailing climate of increasing uncertainty (rising risk of unemployment, pension funding problems and unstable family structures), French households have adopted new saving behavior reflected during the nineties, primarily by considerable investment in life insurance and its derivative...

The dual motives of housing behavior, consumption and investment make the analysis of housing purchases quite difficult. Nevertheless, it is better to refer to a model that keeps the two dimensional aspect of housing (Henderson and Ioannides [16]). In the absence of institutional considerations,...

Cette etude vise a reconstituer la trajectoire d'une lignee ascendante agnatique dans un cadre rural aux XIXe et XXe siecles et a en decrire les logiques d'accumulation et de transmission du patrimoine a partir des modeles economiques du paradigme neoclassique. L'itineraire patrimonial des six...

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...