Word: kopczuk
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People respond to incentives, the economists say, and it’s starting to look like they’re right. According to a study released last year by Wojciech Kopczuk and Joel Slemrod, two researchers at the University of Michigan, Americans obey the injunctions of their pocketbooks even when life and death are at stake. The study, which examined changes in the estate tax over the past century, found a statistically significant correlation between the exact timing of death and the relevant tax advantages to the decedent’s estate. In other words, when a reduction...
...their efforts, Kopczuk and Slemrod received the 2001 “Ig Nobel” prize for economics, a parody prize given out by a science humor journal. Yet we may soon find out if the researchers deserve the real Nobel instead. The Bush administration’s repeal of the estate tax will take place in 2010, but the tax will then come back into force on Jan. 1, 2011. This bizarre sequence of events provides the perfect test case for the death-and-taxes theory. Will prospective heirs request extraordinary measures as 2009 draws to a close...
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