Forskningssemniar: The perceived importance of inherited wealth and the support for inheritance taxation: Evidence from a randomized experiment

Daniel Waldenstrøm, IFN/PSE: http://www.uueconomics.se/danielw/index.htm

Abstract: We study how people’s attitudes to inheritance taxation change when they are exposed to information about the importance of inherited wealth. Using a randomized survey experiment on a representative sample of the Swedish population drawn from administrative registers, we find that individuals systematically underestimate the importance of inherited wealth and that our information treatment significantly increases the support for inheritance taxation. The effect is relatively uniform across socio-economic groups and is robust to variations in the measurement of the response variable and the experimental design. Our findings suggest that the low salience of wealth inequality in society could be one explanation behind the relatively marginalized role of capital taxation in developed economies.

 

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