2021/01/01 by Spencer Bastani, Daniel Waldenström · 7 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Biology #Demographic economics #Economics #Finance #Financial Literacy, Pension, Retirement Analysis #Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics #Inequality #Inheritance (genetic algorithm) #Luck #National wealth #Psychology #Public economics #Retirement, Disability, and Employment #Salience (neuroscience)
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/ecca.12359
openalex publication_date 2021/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
We study how attitudes to inheritance taxation are influenced by information about the role of inherited wealth in society. Using a randomized experiment in a register‐linked Swedish survey, we find that informing individuals about the large aggregate importance of inherited wealth and its link to inequality of opportunity significantly increases the support for inheritance taxation. Changes in the perceived economic importance of inherited wealth and altered views on whether luck matters most for economic success appear to be driving factors behind the treatment effect. Our findings suggest that the low salience of inherited wealth could be one explanation behind the relatively marginalized role of inheritance taxation in developed economies.