DONDENA Seminar Series FALL 19/12/2022

"Giving with a warm hand: evidence on estate planning and inter vivos transfers"

Abstract

This study examines the importance of estate planning and inter-vivos transfers towards the end of life. We use administrative records on all deaths taking place in the Netherlands between 2006 and 2013 linked to wealth and income tax records and the hospital discharge register. These unique data allow us to distinguish between sudden unanticipated deaths and non-sudden anticipated deaths as a quasi-natural experiment. Our results show that non-sudden deaths are associated with significantly less financial wealth at the time of death. We interpret this as inter-vivos transfers that result from estate planning towards the end of life. We find significant effects not only at the top of the wealth distribution but along the entire upper half of the distribution. Diseases with a relatively low survival rate that do not affect cognitive abilities appear as the most likely to trigger estate planning.

Bio

Viola Angelini is Professor in the Economics of Household Behaviour at the Department of Economics, Econometrics and Finance of the University of Groningen. Her research interests are in household consumption and saving behaviour, health economics, the economics of ageing and applied microeconometrics. She holds a joint PhD in Economics from the Universities of York and Padua.

Please note that the seminar will be in a hybrid format - presence + Zoom meetings at the following link: https://unibocconi-it.zoom.us/j/98218912844