While little agreement exists regarding the taxation of bequests in general, there is a widely held view that accidental bequests should be subject to a confiscatory tax. We propose to reexamine the optimal taxation of accidental bequests in an economy where individuals care about what they...

The Chichilnisky criterion is an explicit social welfare function that satisfies compelling conditions of intergenerational equity. However, it is time inconsistent and has no optimal solution in the Ramsey model. By investigating stationary Markov equilibria in the game that generations with...

Are the probable future negative effects of climate change an argument for decreasing the discount rate to promote the interests of future generations? The analysis of the present paper suggests that such stronger intergenerational altruism might undermine future wellbeing if not complemented by...