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Lobbying, family concerns and the lack of political support for estate taxation

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  • DE DONDER, Philippe

    (Toulouse School of Economics, France)

  • PESTIEAU, Pierre

    (CREPP, Université de Liège & HEC Belgium; Université catholique de Louvain, CORE, Belgium; Toulouse School of Economics, France)

Abstract

We provide an explanation for why estate taxation is surprisingly little used over the world, given the skewness of the estate distribution. Taxing estates implies meddling with intra-family decisions, which may be frown upon by many. At the same time, the concentration of estates means that a low proportion of the population stands to gain a lot by decreasing estate taxation. We provide an analytical model, together with numerical simulations, where agents bequeathing large estates make monetary contributions that are used to play up the salience of the encroachment aspects of estate taxation on family decisions in order to decrease its political support.

Suggested Citation

  • DE DONDER, Philippe & PESTIEAU, Pierre, 2013. "Lobbying, family concerns and the lack of political support for estate taxation," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2013070, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
  • Handle: RePEc:cor:louvco:2013070
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    Cited by:

    1. YATSENKO, Yuri & HRITONENKO, Natali & BRECHET, Thierry, 2014. "Modeling of environmental adaptation versus pollution mitigation," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2014006, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    2. DASH, Sanjeeb & GÜNLÜK, Oktay & WOLSEY, Laurence A., 2014. "The continuous knapsack set," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2014007, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    3. Bezin, Emeline & Ponthière, Gregory, 2019. "The tragedy of the commons and socialization: Theory and policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    4. KORNEK, Urik & LESSMANN, Kai & TULKENS, Henry, 2014. "Transferable and non transferable utility implementations of coalitional stability in integrated assessment models," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2014035, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    5. NESTEROV, Yu. & SHIKHMAN, Vladimir, 2014. "Convergent subgradient methods for nonsmooth convex minimization," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2014005, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    estate taxation; family values; political economy; lobbying; Kantian equilibrium;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household

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