This paper suggests that the nature of the funding of defined benefit pension plans may be an important reason why personal saving has not responded positively to the high real interest rites and tax incentives to encourage saving and investment of the last few years. From a firm's standpoint,...

In the United States, more than two-thirds of decedents with multichild families divide their estates exactly equally among their children. In contrast, intra vivos gifts are usually unequal. These findings challenge the validity of existing theories regarding the determination of...

Proposals to alter the estate tax are contentious and have been debated largely in an empirical vacuum. This paper examines time series and cross-sectional variation to identify the effects of gift and estate taxation on the timing of private transfers. The analysis is based on data from the...

In this paper, I employ data drawn from the Social Security Administration's Retirement History Survey (RHS) to study the accuracy of expectations concerning the timing of retirement. The RHS is ideally suited for this purpose, in that it collects information on retirement plans, and follows...

This paper presents a computable general equilibrium model that simulates the effects on employment, output, wages, and economic efficiency of introducing comparable worth into the U.S. economy. The model calculates economy-wide aggregate impacts and disaggregated results for individuals grouped...

Proponents of transfer taxation argue that levies on gifts and estates serve the dual purposes of breaking up large concentrations of private wealth, while raising significant revenues. A number of commentators have recently questioned the first of these purported advantages, on the grounds that...

In his well-known analysis of the national debt, Robert Barro introduced the notion of a "dynastic family." This notion has since become a standard research tool, particularly in the areas of public finance and macroeconomics. In this paper, we critique the assumptions upon which the dynastic...

We examine the desirability of opt-out minimization, a well-known and simple rule of thumb for setting default options such as passively selected contribution rates in employee-directed pension plans. Existing results suggest that this strategy is welfare-optimal only under highly restrictive...

We investigate how individuals think groups should aggregate members’ ordinal preferences -that is, how they interpret “the will of the people.” In an experiment, we elicit revealed attitudes toward ordinal preference aggregation and classify subjects according to the rules they apparently...

We investigate how individuals think groups should aggregate members’ ordinal preferences – that is, how they interpret “the will of the people.” In an experiment, we elicit revealed attitudes toward ordinal preference aggregation and classify subjects according to the rules they...