Dear colleagues,
The Department of Economics cordially invites you to the WU Economic Research Seminar (Department Seminar) on
Wednesday, March 20, with
Daniel Waldenström
(Research Institute of Industrial Economics)
on
"Salience of Inherited Wealth and the Support for Inheritance Taxation"
Abstract:
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. The effect is almost uniform across socio-economic groups and survives a battery of robustness tests.
Changes in the perceived economic importance of inherited wealth and altered views on whether luck matters most for economic success appear to be the main 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.
Time and place: Wednesday, March
20, 4.30
– 6.00
p.m., Campus WU, Welthandelsplatz 1, 1020 Vienna, building D4, entrance A, 2nd floor,
Department meeting room 2.008.
With best regards,
Harald Oberhofer
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Univ.-Prof. Dr. Harald Oberhofer
Institute for International Economics
WU Vienna University of Economics and Business
Phone: +43/1/31336-4984
Fax: +43/1/31336-4984
Email:
harald.oberhofer@wu.ac.at
Webpage:
https://www.wu.ac.at/ie/mitarbeiter/harald-oberhofer/
Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO)
Phone: +43/1/7982601-468
Fax: +43/1/7989386
Email:
harald.oberhofer@wifo.ac.at