From: Nicola Taylor (19518173@student.murdoch.edu.au)
Date: Wed Oct 16 2002 - 22:46:51 EDT
WONDERFUL! I will give this to my first year Micro students when I review do elasticity next week Nicky > The 2001 IGnobel Economics Prize Winner > > Every year at Harvard, an IGnobel prize awarded to a preposterous paper > published by an academic. Last years' award winner in economics was the > following: Joel Slemrod, of the University of Michigan Business School, > and > Wojciech Kopczuk, of University of British Columbia, for their conclusion > that people find a way to postpone their deaths if that that would qualify > them for a lower rate on the inheritance tax. [REFERENCE:"Dying to Save > Taxes: Evidence from Estate Tax Returns on the Death Elasticity," National > Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. W8158, March 2001.]. Dont > believe me? Check out the link <http://papers.nber.org/papers/W8158> > > Abstract: > > This paper examines data from U.S. federal tax returns to shed light on > whether the timing of death is responsive to its tax consequences. We > investigate the temporal pattern of deaths around the time of changes in > the > estate tax system periods when living longer, or dying sooner, could > significantly affect estate tax liability. We find some evidence that > there > is a small death elasticity, although we cannot rule out that what we have > uncovered is ex post doctoring of the reported date of death. However, the > fact that we find that postponement, rather than acceleration, of death is > more likely to occur suggests that this phenomenon is at last partly a > real > (albeit timing) response to taxation.
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