Intra-family wealth transmission has been shown to reinforce inequality and dynastic privilege. So far, researchers have focused exclusively on taxation as the policy tool for dispersing private wealth. We instead consider inheritance law. Many countries force testators to leave certain minimal estate shares to direct descendants. Relaxing such constraints could allow wealth to be spread more widely. We explore this possibility in a unique dataset on 16,933 wills established online before and after a reform of inheritance law in Switzerland. Applying a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, we find that lower minimum shares for direct descendants were used primarily for increasing the shares given to spouses and life partners. Estate shares flowing to heirs outside of the core family barely increased. We infer that intra-family bequest motives remain so strong that greater testator freedoms are an ineffective tool for increasing the dispersion of wealth at the time of transmission.

I examine behavioral responses to inheritance and gift taxes in a setting where individuals knew the tax would increase three months before the new tax code took effect. Using tax microdata from Brazil, I employ bunching and difference-in-differences (DD) methods and find that individuals significantly retime their wealth transfers to avoid taxes. Retimed gifts resulted in smaller inheritances for nearly three years. Moreover, I find that responses are sensitive to changes in top gift marginal tax rates and tax design (flat rates vs progressive brackets). Finally, the number of declared bequests decreased in the medium run in reform states, particularly among small inheritances.

We study the impact of the UK house price boom on the intergenerational persistence of homeownership, housing wealth, location and earnings. Increases in local house prices have a negative effect on homeownership and increase the intergenerational persistence of housing wealth. We show that by age 28 to 27 around 10\% to 20\% of parental housing wealth gains are passed through to children's housing wealth. This effect on housing wealth inequality is explained not by higher homeownership rates but by the children of wealthier parents being more likely to move to and own a home in London. Moving to this high house price and high earning part of the country comes alongside an effect of parental wealth on occupation choice and earnings.

We study individual earnings responses to positive wealth shocks from bequests and lotteries. In a life-cycle model, we show how responses may differ depending on the age of the recipient. Tracking earnings responses to 269,000 positive wealth shocks in Swiss individual-level tax records, we confirm the qualitative predic- tions of the model: irrespective of the source of the wealth shock, average earn- ings responses are consistently negative. The strongest responses are found for older workers – partly through early retirement –, and for women. Conditional on age, inheritance triggers weaker earnings responses than lottery winnings, which is consistent with anticipation effects. We use the calibrated model to simulate the effects of inheritance taxation and of shifting the age distribution of intergenera- tional transfers, e.g. via incentivizing inter-vivos gifts.