[eng] Bequest and Inheritance from French Fiscal Data, . by Luc Arrondel, Anne Laferrère.. . In this paper, a sample of 3200 estate duty forms filed in 1987 is used for a basis in describing the behaviour of the French regarding bequests and devises. It showed an estimated overall transfer...

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...