We study employee mental health to assess the long-term, non-monetary consequences of mergers. Using employer-employee level data linked to individual health records, we document that the incidence of stress, anxiety, depression, and psychiatric medication usage increase following mergers. 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 skills are most affected. Mergers that generate more mental illness among employees perform worse after the transaction. A variety of tests address endogeneity concerns.

Using repeat-sales data on apartments in Sweden, we estimate the gender gap in real estate returns. We find that transactions executed by women earn 2 percentage points (pp) lower returns compared to those executed by men, which narrows down to less than 0.5 pp once renovations are taken into account. This residual gender gap is fully explained by the fact that women are less likely to select into real estate-relevant occupations and are older on average. We cannot confirm that the gender gap stems from men’s higher ability to either time the market or negotiate aggressively.

We estimate behavioral responses to dividend taxation using recent French reforms: a rate hike followed, five years later, by a cut. Exploiting household and firm tax data as well as data linking firms and shareholders, we find very large dividend tax elasticities to both reforms. Individuals who control firms adjust dividend receipts instantaneously, accounting for most of the aggregate dividend reaction. Investment is insensitive to dividend taxation. Dividend adjustments are instead driven by corporate saving, as owner-managers treat firms as low-tax saving vehicles. Our results fit the ‘new view’ of dividend taxation, provided an additional low-tax yet costly payout option is available that offers a tax arbitrage opportunity to entrepreneurs in control of their firms.

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.

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.