Thesis advisor: Donald Cox / <bold>Chapter 1 - Intergenerational Transfer Inflows to Adult Children of Divorce <bold> Do adult children of divorce receive less money from their parents than children of intact unions? Are they less likely to receive parental help for buying a house, starting a business or weathering a financial crisis? Though there is evidence that an individual divorced parent gives less to his child than he would give if he were married to his child's other parent, no study has examined the transfers given by both divorced parents. I approach the question of transfers to adult children of divorce from a fresh angle by asking not, "How much did the parent give?" but instead, "How much did the child get?" I also examine the correlation between parents' remarriage and transfers received. Using data from the 1988 wave of the PSID, I find that parental divorce and remarriage are uncorrelated with the incidence of a transfer. Within the select group of children who receive a transfer, however, divorce is correlated with an increased transfer amount, while a father's remarriage is correlated with a decreased amount. <bold> Chapter 2 - The Correlation Between Subjective Parental Longevity and Intergenerational Transfers <bold> Are parental financial transfers to adult children correlated with subjective parental longevity? Despite rapid and continuing increases in life expectancy, no previous study has looked at transfers in relation to parents' opinions of how long they will live. This paper uses the subjective survival probability data included in the Health and Retirement Study to examine this potential correlation for a select group of unmarried older parents. For mothers only, I consistently find modest positive correlations between subjective longevity and anticipated future inter vivos transfers and bequests. For fathers, I find a non-linear relationship between subjective longevity and anticipated future inter vivos transfers. I discuss the potential reasons for these descriptive results and some further questions that arise from them. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 1996. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2961. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 93).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 144-152). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 144-152). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1968. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis argues that the laws of waqf in Iran lack modern relevance. Such laws have never been completely modernised, and the waqf system, no longer responsible for the delivery of public goods, still holds a vast array of properties and resources. Many of the ongoing socioeconomic and political disappointments of Iran, which, at the core, are the weakness of the country's private economic sector and its human capital deficiency, stand among the lasting consequences of the deficiency of resources which the institution of waqf has under its control. Traditional Islamic law laid the ground for the economic infrastructure of the Middle Eastern countries until the late 19th century. Among the institutions that contributed to shaping the economy of the region are the Islamic law of inheritance, which inhibited capital accumulation; the absence in Islamic law of the concept of a corporation and the consequent weaknesses of civil society; and the waqf, which locked vast resources into unproductive organisations for the delivery of social services. It is often argued that many of these obstacles to economic development were largely overcome through radical reforms initiated in the 19th century. However, the modern civil law of Iran has kept traditional Islamic law at the core of laws of waqf, and the process of modernisation of its laws remains incomplete.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the lives of men and women living in London and Bury St. Edmunds in the late fourteenth - early fifteenth centuries. Sources studied include the administrative and legal records of the City of London and of the Abbot and Convent of St. Edmund's abbey; legislation and court records of royal government and the wills and testaments of Londoners and Bury St. Edmunds' inhabitants. Considerable research on a wide range of topics on London, but far less work on Bury St. Edmunds, has already been undertaken; however, this thesis is the first systematic comparative study of these two towns. The introduction discusses the historiography and purpose of the thesis; the methodology used, and the shortcomings of using medieval wills and the probate process. Chapter One discusses the testamentary jurisdiction in both towns; who was involved in the will making process, and the role that clerics played as both executors and scribes and how the church courts operated. Chapter Two focuses on testators' preparations for the afterlife, their choices concerning burial location, funeral arrangements and the provisions made for prayers for their souls. Chapter Three examines in detail their pious and charitable bequests and investigates what ‘good works' testators chose to support apart from ‘forgotten tithes'. The family and household relationships, including servants and apprentices, are examined in Chapter Four, exploring the differences in bequests made depending on the testators' marital status, together with evidence for close friendships and social networks. Chapter Five discusses the ownership and types of books referred to in wills and the inter-relationship between the donors and the recipients. Testators' literacy and the provision for education are also investigated.

Essay 1: People’s planning to evade the inheritance tax curtails its merits. However, the extent of planning remains a matter of argument. According to popular belief, it is widespread, but few estimates have been presented. This study estimates the extent of estate size under-reporting, a form of inheritance tax planning, using the repeal of the Swedish tax on spousal bequests, in 2004, and a regression discontinuity design. The results show that, on average, estate sizes were 17 percent lower, and the share of estates that completely escaped tax payments was 26 percent larger due to under-reporting. As a consequence, government revenues from the tax were only half of what they would have been without under-reporting. Moreover, preferences and means for under-reporting were not only prevalent among the wealthy, but also among those receiving relatively small inheritances. The study contributes to a growing literature on tax avoidance and evasion by estimating the extent of estate size under-reporting, its effect on government revenues and by showing that it was widespread in the population. / Essay 2: There is an ongoing debate about whether or not inheritance and estate taxes are effective in raising revenues and in contributing to a more equal society. The different views on transfer taxes are largely dependent on beliefs about whether people plan their wealth to avoid these taxes. In this paper, we follow Kopczuk (2007) and study people's planning response to the onset of terminal illness. An extension of Kopczuk’s work is that we can effectively control for responses in wealth caused by terminal illness but unrelated to tax planning. We do this by exploiting a tax reform in Sweden that removed the incentives for people to plan their estates to avoid inheritance taxation. We find some evidence of long-term terminal illness inducing responses consistent with tax planning, but that these are not widespread or efficient enough to reduce the overall tax burden in the study population. Our results, similarly to those of Kopczuk, show that people appear to postpone some decisions about their estates until shortly before death. / Essay 3: Small businesses form an essential part of all economies, making it necessary to understand the conditions under which they operate. This paper contributes to that understanding by studying how survival, income and profits of small businesses change when their owners receive inheritances. Using a difference-in-differences strategy and Swedish registry data on small businesses and estate reports, it is shown that survival rates increase with almost three percentage points when the owners receive inheritances of, on average, SEK 275,000. However, the profits of the surviving small businesses and the income of their owners do not increase, indicating that the inheritance did not increase survival by making investments possible, investments to increase profits and income, but by enabling small business owners of lower ability to subsist. The study contributes to the literature on the conditions for small businesses by providing causal evidence on the effect of increased access to capital among existing businesses. It thereby complements the rich literature on the role of capital for small business start-ups. / Essay 4: This article shows that a simple monetary incentive can dramatically reduce electric energy consumption (EEC) in the residential sector and simultaneously achieve a more desirable allocation of EEC costs. The analyses are based on data from a policy experiment conducted in 2011 and 2012 by a private housing company in about 1,800 apartments. Roughly 800 of the tenants (treatment group) were subject to a change from having unlimited EEC included in their rent to having to pay the market price for their own EEC. This change was achieved by installing EEC meters in each apartment. Tenants in the other 1,000 apartments (control group) experienced no policy change and were subject to apartment-level billing and metering during the entire study period. Using a quasiexperimental research design and daily data on EEC from 2007 to 2015, we estimate that apartment-level billing and metering permanently reduce EEC by about 25%. Moreover, we show that households reduce EEC immediately after being informed that they will be billed for EEC, the reduction is larger when the production cost is higher, and the reduction in EEC comes almost exclusively from households with very high EEC before the policy change. Finally, we show that apartment-level billing and metering are cost-effective, with a cost per reduced kilowatt hour of US$0.01, and for each invested dollar, the social value of reductions in air pollution, including CO2 emissions, is $2.

The objective of this research was to describe the extent to which Gift Annuity Agreements were used by United States higher education institutions in raising private philanthropic support during the period 1988-93.

Cette thèse est constituée de quatre chapitres distincts. Le premier chapitre présente un travail écrit en collaboration avec Christophe Spaenjers. Nous montrons que les individus avec une espérance de vie subjective qui est plus longue, ont une fraction d'actions conditionnelles qui est augmentée.L'effet d'une espérance de vie qui diminue est atténué par des motifs de légation.Dans le deuxième chapitre, j'étudie l'importance de la séquence de naissance pour les décisions financières.Je montre que les aînés diffèrent de leurs frères et soeurs par leurs décisions.Les résultats accentuent l'importance des expériences familiales pour les choix des agents. Dans le troisième chapitre, je montre que la présence d'un entourage diminue la probabilité d'une réponse, et augmente la propension d'une auto-évaluation exagérée des aptitudes. Cette observation implique une sous-estimation de l'importance de l'aplomb pour le comportement des individus. Le quatrième chapitre est le résultat d'une collaboration avec Thomas Bourveau et François Brochet.Nous identifions les plaintes dont les plaignants allèguent que l'entreprise ait caché une mauvaise performance liée à une acquisition. Utilisant la proclamation des plaintes comme un traitement de l'industrie, nous trouvons des résultats cohérents avec un effet disciplinant le comportement d'investir des autres dirigeants de l'industrie / This dissertation consists of four distinct chapters.The first chapter presents the joint work with Christophe Spaenjers.We find that individuals with longer subjective life horizons hold higher conditional equity shares, and the effect of a shortening life horizon on portolio choice is offset by bequest motives. In the second chapter,I examine the explanatory power of birth order to financial household decisions. I show that firstborns differ in their financial decision-making from later born siblings. The results highlight the importance of personal family experiences for household choices. In the third chapter,I document that, in surveys, the presence of companions decreases the probability of respondents replying, and increases the probability of respondents overreporting their self-assessed abilities. The overreporting leads to a downward bias in the estimates of the importance of overconfidence for individuals' behavior. The fourth chapter presents joint work with Thomas Bourveau and François Brochet. We identify M&A lawsuits, where plaintiffs allege that the firm hid poor performance related to prior acquisition. Using the filing of a lawsuit as an industry shock, we show findings consistent with a disciplining effect from the lawsuit for the investment behavior of peer firms' managers