Using employer-employee level data linked to individual health records, we document that the incidence of stress, anxiety, depression, psychiatric medication usage, and even suicide increase following acquisitions. These effects are prevalent among employees from both targets and acquirers, in weak as well as in growing, profitable firms. Employees who experience negative career developments within the merging firms, 'blue-collar' workers, and employees with lower cognitive and non-cognitive skills are most affected. A variety of tests address endogeneity concerns, including an analysis exploiting failed mergers. Our findings point to mental illness as a significant non-pecuniary cost of acquisitions.

Using an exhaustive panel of French income and wealth taxpayers, we find that entrepreneurs pay far more wealth taxes once they retire. Despite this, entrepreneurs do not leave France more often than high-wage employees upon retirement. Rather, retired entrepreneurs reinvest part of the proceeds from the sale of their business into tax-favored angel investments.

We estimate the tax elasticity of dividends using two recent French reforms: a hike in the dividend tax rate followed, five years later, by a cut. To follow the cash movements within the balance sheets of households and firms caused by these reforms, we use newly-accessible personal and corporate tax registries. Following the tax increase, the elasticity of dividends equals four and there is no shifting towards other personal income categories. We find instead an increase in companies’ spending. After the tax decrease, payouts revert to their initial level, but not enough to offset the amounts received during the high-tax period.

This paper investigates the channels through which saving flows impact the dynamics of wealth inequality. The analysis relies on an administrative panel that reports the assets and income of every Swedish resident at the yearly frequency. We document that the saving rate, defined as saving from labor income divided by net worth, is on average a decreasing function of net worth itself. The saving rate is also highly heterogeneous within net worth brackets. Heterogeneity across and within net worth brackets have conflicting effects on wealth inequality. As a result, saving rate heterogeneity is measured to have a strong impact on social mobility but only a weak impact on the distribution of net worth. Heterogeneity in wealth return is instead the main driver of the recent increase in top wealth shares.

The conventional wisdom is that dynastic control provides sharp incentives to entrepreneurs ex-ante, when founders run firms in anticipation of their progeny being in charge once they retire, and bad management ex-post, when untalented heirs take over. Using data on Swedish private firms and the individuals who control them, I construct a cross-sectional measure of owners’ dynastic intentions based on the presence in the board of children of the current chairman, and provide instruments for dynastic control using the main owner’s family characteristics. Dynastic intentions make it three times less likely that the firm will be taken over by outsiders in the future and they also immediately lead to less delegation of management to outsiders. Yet, my estimations rule out any first-order effect, positive or negative, of dynastic control on firm profitability.

Why do entrepreneurs differ in their degree of tax avoidance? I use thresholds in the applicability of corporate taxes and labor regulations to identify tax avoidance incentives across entrepreneurial firms. I measure avoidance as the gap between the observed densities of taxable income and employment and those that would arise without legal thresholds. Operational profitability strongly predicts avoidance. This reflects greater access to legal information among sophisticated ventures, led by entrepreneurs with substantial human capital. Avoidance is also larger when entrepreneurs work under ownership structures giving high-powered incentives to perform. Overall, entrepreneurial inputs are key for minimizing legal costs, not just for economic efficiency.