The inheritance tax is often seen as an effective tool to reduce wealth inequality, to raise public budgets if needed, and to increase incentives to work by lowering the tax burden on labour, which is especially high in Germany according to the OECD. The purpose of this paper is therefore to...

Economic growth varies substantially across regions and over time. This paper shows that economic growth in a person's birth place is an important determinant for wealth in adulthood. We exploit a new dataset that oversamples wealthy individuals in Germany and includes information on birth...