We explain why wealthy people often favor estate taxation, while wealthless people oppose it. Wealthy people devote part of their estate to charities. Estate taxation with tax breaks for charities increases contributions to an otherwise underprovided public good.

We study the role and design of private and public insurance programs when informal care is uncertain. Children’s degree of altruism is randomly distributed over some interval. Social insurance helps parents who receive a low level of care, but it comes at the cost of crowding out informal...

We study the design of social long-term care (LTC) insurance when informal care is exchange-based. Parents do not observe their children's cost of providing care, which is continuously distributed over some interval. They choose a rule specifying transfers that are conditional on the level of...

The purpose of this paper is to survey the theoretical literature on wealth transfer taxation. The focus is normative: we are looking at the design of an optimal tax structure from the standpoint of both equity and efficiency. The gist of this survey is that the optimal design closely depends on...

The purpose of this paper is to survey the theoretical literature on wealth transfer taxation. The focus is normative: we are looking at the design of an optimal tax structure from the standpoint of both equity and efficiency. The gist of this survey is that the optimal design closely depends on...

We study the design of public long-term care (LTC) insurance when the altruism of informal caregivers is uncertain. We consider non-linear policies where the LTC benefit depends on the level of informal care, which is assumed to be observable while children’s altruism is not. The traditional...

We study the role and design of private and public insurance programs when informal care is uncertain. Children's degree of altruism is randomly distributed over some interval. Social insurance helps parents who receive a low level of care, but it comes at the cost of crowding out informal care....

We study the design of public long-term care (LTC) insurance when the altruism of informal caregivers is uncertain. We consider non-linear policies where the LTC benefit depends on the level of informal care, which is assumed to be observable while children’s altruism is not. The traditional...