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This paper uses a heterogeneous‐agent overlapping‐generations model to examine the fiscal and distributional consequences of introducing a means test in US Social Security. I find that a means test, that is, conditioning benefit payments on a household's earnings or assets, leads to a higher implicit tax on old‐age resources, but has desirable distributional effects. A 75% cut in the benefits to households with earnings of more than 200% of the median leads to a 2.3% reduction in the overall size of Social Security, but has almost no effect on average dollar benefits. In contrast, a fiscally comparable payroll tax cut leads to an across‐the‐board decline of 2% in the average dollar benefits, despite an increase in capital and labor. A fiscally comparable delay in the benefit eligibility age increases benefits for all, but negatively affects capital and labor. Finally, an asset‐based means test causes a decline of 1% in the average dollar benefits, but has a large negative effect on capital and the accidental bequests left behind by deceased households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is little agreement regarding the taxation of bequests in general, there is a widely held view that accidental bequests should be subjected to a confiscatory tax. We re‐examine the optimal taxation of accidental bequests by introducing a concern for compensating individuals for a premature death. Assuming that individuals care about what they leave to their children, we show that, whereas the 100 percent tax view holds under the utilitarian criterion, the ex post egalitarian criterion (giving priority to the worst‐off ex post) implies subsidizing accidental bequests so as to compensate the short‐lived. In a second‐best setting, compensating the short‐lived justifies taxing total bequests at a rate increasing with the age of the deceased. Finally, when the model is extended to an intergenerational setting, accidental bequests can no longer be used as a redistributive tool, so that ex post egalitarianism rejoins the 100 percent tax view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how the absence of annuities in financial markets affects capital accumulation in a two-period overlapping generations model. Our findings indicate that the effect on capital is ambiguous in general equilibrium, because there are two competing mechanisms at work. On the one hand, the absence of annuities increases the price of old-age consumption relative to the price of early-life consumption. This induces a substitution effect that reduces saving and capital, and an income effect that has the opposite effect as households want to consume less when young, causing them to save more. On the other hand, accidental bequests originate from the assets of the deceased under missing annuity markets. The bequest received in early life always has a positive income effect on saving, but the bequest received in old age, conditional on survival, is effectively a partial annuity with both substitution and income effects. We find that when the desire to smooth consumption is high, the income effects dominate, so the capital stock always increases when annuity markets are missing. However, when the desire to smooth consumption is low, the substitution effects dominate, and the capital stock decreases with missing annuity markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the concept of unintentional bequests in a closed economy à la Chakraborty (J Econ Theory 116:119-137, ) with overlapping generations. We show that scarce public investments in health can lead to poverty traps depending on the relative size of the output elasticity of capital. More importantly, the existence of unintentional bequests, rather than a market for annuities, means that health tax rates play a prominent role in determining the stability of the long-term equilibrium in rich economies. In fact, Neimark-Sacker bifurcations and endogenous fluctuations occur depending on the size of the public health system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When accidental bequests signal otherwise unobservable individual characteristics, such as productivity and longevity, the population should be partitioned into two groups: those who do not receive an inheritance and those who do. The first tagged group receives a Mirrlees second-best tax schedule; the second group, when its type is fully revealed, faces a first-best tax schedule. Receiving an inheritance makes high-ability types worse off and low-ability types better off. High-ability individuals face a bequest tax of more than 100 percent, while low-ability types face a bequest tax that can be smaller, as well as larger, than 100 percent, and it might even be negative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]