Substitution effects across charitable donations

This paper examines substitution effects across charitable donations, specifically the effect of 2nd collections on 1st collections at Catholic Masses. While 2nd collections increased total donations by 17.8%, 18.4% of 2nd collection donations came from 1st collections which fell 4.3%.     

Choosing Your Object of Benevolence: A Field Experiment on Donation Options*

In a large natural field experiment, we explore the effect of providing donors with the opportunity of choosing the target country for their donations. We find that our treatment manipulation affects neither the average donation size nor the response rate. Only a small fraction of donors (3.5 percent) actually choose their object of benevolence. These donors give more than those who do not specify a recipient. However, based on previous donations, we can only provide indicative evidence that this might be a causal effect rather than a mere selection effect.     

Does It Matter if You Are Observed by Others? Evidence from Donations in the Field*

We investigate whether people's donations in the field are affected by the presence of others. In the analysis, we distinguish between individuals who arrived at a national park alone and those who arrived as members of a group. We also investigated the effect of donations being made in the presence of a third party made in the presence of a third party. We find that donations are significantly more frequent for individuals who are members of a group. When a third party is present, we find that the total donations by individuals who are a part of a group are significantly higher than those of lone travelers, mainly because of the increased probability of donating.     

Paying the price of sweetening your donation: Evidence from a natural field experiment

We add a gift in appreciation of the subject’s contribution to a social reference treatment successfully proven to trigger higher donations, and find that the share of people contributing decreases significantly, thereby eroding the original treatment’s capacity to increase donations.     

Donations in a recursive dynamic model

Abstract.  This paper studies how donations respond to unexpected permanent changes in income and tax rates in a recursive dynamic model. The dynamic approach yields several interesting insights. If marginal tax rates are progressive, a permanent jump in a household's income increases its consumption and donations in the short run, but has no effect in the long run. The permanent income elasticity of current donations is likely to exceed one. If the marginal tax rate is flat, the jump in income raises consumption and donations in both the short and the long run. A permanent marginal tax rate cut raises consumption and donations in the long run if marginal tax rates are progressive, while it reduces donations in the short run if it has little direct impact on tax payments. If the marginal tax rate is flat, a tax cut has a positive effect on consumption in both the short and the long run, but has an ambiguous effect on donations.     

An assessment of the impact of tax incentives relative to socio-economic characteristics on charitable giving in Canada

This research examines the effectiveness of the Canadian tax incentive system for charitable giving while attempting to deal with two persistent methodological problems in past research. The Heckman selection model and the ordered probit model are used to examine the Canadian tax incentive system with 2010 survey data. The results imply that the effect of the tax credit systematically increases with an increase in donation expenditure suggesting that the higher tax credit for larger donations is more effective than the lower tax credit for smaller donations. While the results suggest that the current tax policy is effective, socio-economic characteristics, such as wealth, household income, and university education, appear to have a greater impact on donations.     

The impact of taxes and wasteful government spending on giving

We examine how taxes impact charitable giving and how this relationship is affected by the degree of wasteful government spending. In our model, individuals make donations to charities knowing that the government collects a flat-rate tax on income (net of charitable donations) and redistributes part of the tax revenue. The rest of the tax revenue is wasted. The model predicts that a higher tax rate increases charitable donations. Surprisingly, the model shows that a higher degree of waste decreases donations (when the elasticity of marginal utility with respect to consumption is high enough). We test the model’s predictions using a laboratory experiment with actual donations to charities and find that the tax rate has an insignificant effect on giving. The degree of waste, however, has a large, negative and highly significant effect on giving.

     

Non-discriminatory donation relief and strategic commitment under political competition

Tax relief for private donations towards the provision of collective goods can protect minorities from majority-driven outcomes in which tax revenues are exclusively used to finance the provision of public goods that are only valued by the majority. In this paper we show that non-discriminatory tax relief for private donations can arise in political equilibrium as a strategic commitment device aimed at creating and supporting political alliances that would not otherwise be able to coalesce.     

授权型领导对员工隐性知识分享的影响机制

在环境不确定性和内外部资源约束情境下，知识管理对于企业成长与发展变得愈发重要。从心理授权视角出发，探讨了授权型领导与员工隐性知识分享的关系，并以角色认同与自我归类理论为基础，进一步研究了内部人身份感知与职场友谊在以上关系中的作用。基于276份“主管-员工”配对数据的实证结果表明：授权型领导对员工隐性知识分享具有显著正向预测效果；内部人身份感知在授权型领导与隐性知识分享之间起到部分中介作用；职场友谊正向调节内部人身份感知与隐性知识分享间的关系，即职场友谊水平越高，内部人身份感知对员工隐性知识分享的正向作用越强。     

A Coordination Game Model of Charitable Giving and Seed Money Effect

If potential donors for a charity project possess the warm‐glow properties in their preferences, we can represent their behavior with a coordination game. Accordingly, we construct a simultaneous incomplete information game model of charitable giving based on a simple global coordination game. We demonstrate that merely by the effect of seed money to shift the threshold requirement of the donations for project success downwards, the proportion of donors and the total amount of donations strictly and continuously increase with the amount of seed money. This result is partially compatible with the field experimental evidence in List and Lucking‐Reiley (2002).     

Family model of contributions to non-profit organizations and labour supply

In this article a model is presented in which the family decides the labour supply of both spouses and their time donations to non-profit organizations. For the estimation, Spanish data was used which showed that family size and pre-school children influence decisions made about time distribution of husband and wife. Women with fewer family responsibilities work longer hours and donate more time, whilst the effect on men is the contrary. Also, monetary donations by the family are directly related to time donations by the spouses.     

前因变量、慈善行为与组织绩效研究

随着人们的社会发展观和价值观的逐渐成熟,要求企业承担社会责任的呼声越来越高。作为承担社会责任的一种有效方式,企业慈善捐赠行为在全球范围内迅速发展,不仅捐赠领域越来越广泛、捐赠资源日趋多样,而且更注重捐赠的效果。与迅速增长的慈善实践相比,相关慈善理论略显薄弱,大多研究仅描述了慈善行为本身,鲜有关于慈善产生动因、行为特征、组织绩效的详细解读,因而使理论工作者难以廓清慈善行为的全貌。本文通过理论演绎,阐释了前因变量、慈善行为和组织绩效三者之间的关系,并以此为基础提出相关研究假设,构建了＂前因变量—慈善行为—组织绩效＂这一概念模型,该模型论述了影响慈善捐赠行为的关键因素,揭示了慈善捐赠行为对企业组织绩效的作用机制,未来的研究可以通过实证数据进一步检验和修正理论分析框架,以为我国企业参与慈善活动提供借鉴。     

Do house prices affect campaign contributions?

Individual campaign contributions are the largest source of financing for U.S. presidential and congressional candidates, though the body of research examining why people give remains small. To help understand these decisions, we estimate the causal impact of house prices on donations across campaigns and parties using an instrumental variables strategy. Our results indicate that an increase in house prices increases ZIP code-level donations to Democratic presidential and congressional candidates, with minuscule or no effect for Republican candidates. The effects in areas with a greater proportion of renters are larger than areas with more homeowners. Since this population is likely to experience higher rents as a result of house price increases, this suggests that pleas for policy may inspire giving. Further, areas with the highest fraction of college educated residents also see the largest effects, when compared to less-educated areas, suggesting a wealth effect exists as well.     

Competition, Contractibility, and the Market for Donors to Nonprofits

This article investigates theoretically and empirically theeffects of competition for donors on the behavior of nonprofitorganizations. Theoretically, we consider a situation in whichnonprofit organizations use donations to produce some commodity,but the use of donations is only partially contractible. Themain results of the model indicate that an increase in competition(i) decreases the fraction of donations allocated to perquisiteconsumption and (ii) increases the fraction of donations allocatedto promotional expenditures. Moreover, the effects of competitionare magnified by the ability to contract on the use of donations.These hypotheses are tested with data on the expenditures ofnonprofit organizations in a number of subsectors where competitionis primarily local. We use across–metropolitan statisticalareas' variation to measure differences in competition and proxycontractibility by the importance of tangible assets, whichare more easily observed by donors. The estimated effects ofcompetition and contractibility are consistent with our model.     

Intermediation by aid agencies

This paper models aid agencies as financial intermediaries that do not make a financial return to depositors, whose concern is to transfer resources to investor-beneficiaries. This leads to a problem of verifying that the agency is using donations as intended. One solution to this problem is for an agency to employ altruistic workers at below-market wages: altruistic workers, who can monitor the agency's activities, would not work at below-market rates unless they were genuinely transferring resources to beneficiaries. We consider conditions for this solution to be incentive compatible. In a model with pure moral hazard, observability of wages makes incorporation as a not-for-profit firm redundant as a commitment device. In a model with both moral hazard and adverse selection, incorporation as a not-for-profit firm can serve as a costly commitment mechanism reassuring donors against misuse of their funds. Hiring a worker of low ability can also be a valuable commitment device against fraud.     

Is the income elasticity of environmental improvements less than one?

We estimated the income elasticity of environmental improvements for a number of European data-sets. The value of this parameter is consistently found to be less than one, with few exceptions. Our findings are compared with state-of-the-art contingent valuation studies from other countries. We also compared our findings with those reported in the literature on charitable donations and corporate donations. These studies show a similar pattern; donations decrease as a percentage of income, as income increases.     

Foreign aid preferences and perceptions in donor countries

We present original survey data on preferences for foreign aid in 24 donor countries from 2005 to 2008. On publicly-funded foreign aid (Official Development Assistance, or ODA), we find patterns that are consistent with a standard model of democratic policy formation, in which donations are treated as a pure public good. Controlling for perceptions of current ODA, we show that individual preferences for ODA are (i) negatively correlated with relative income within a country-year; and (ii) positively correlated with inequality at the country level. We extend the analysis to explain variation in the gap between desired aid and actual ODA, arguing that lobbying by high-income special interest groups can divert resources away from the median voter’s preferred level of aid. Consistent with this, we observe that ODA is significantly lower where policymakers are more susceptible to lobbying. Finally, we present a novel test of competing “crowding out” hypotheses. Self-reported private aid donations are negatively correlated with actual ODA, and positively correlated with perceived ODA. This finding is consistent with an emerging argument in the literature, whereby ODA crowds out private aid by enabling charities to forego fundraising activities and crowds in private aid through a signaling channel.     

论公司慈善捐赠的信息披露——制度构建的必要性与可行性研究

公司慈善捐赠信息披露问题在国内外存在很大争议。是否要求公司强制披露慈善捐赠信息要考虑公司慈善捐赠对理性投资者的影响以及公司保护自身商业秘密的需求,而公司慈善捐赠信息披露对伦理投资者的投资选择也有重大影响。公司具有自愿披露慈善捐赠信息的动机,但在我国建立以强制性信息披露为主的慈善捐赠信息披露制度。是为了保护公司利益相关者的知情权、规制公司经营者在慈善捐赠中可能出现的自利行为和不负责行为。当前我国公司慈善捐赠信息披露还存在很大的随意性和不一致性,我国《公司法》、《征券法l-》应明确规定公司慈善捐赠信息披露的形式、内容,要求公司强制披露重大慈善捐赠的决策主体、决议程序、捐赠数额、捐赠对象、受赠人与公司经营层的关系等信息,并建立信息披露豁免配套制度。     

中美两国基础研究社会捐赠比较及对我国的启示

鼓励多元化投入基础研究的国家政策频繁出台，使社会捐赠作为基础研究投入来源引起学者普遍关注。美国运用社会资本进行科研捐赠具有多年发展经验，在支持生命科学、数学、物理学等前沿基础研究领域取得较好成效。为考察我国基础研究社会捐赠现状，对中美两国社会捐赠框架、科研投入多元化格局、捐赠激励政策、非营利机构布局及社会捐赠瓶颈等内容进行对比，从增设基础研究捐赠类目、成立基础研究专项基金会、完善基础研究捐赠税收优惠政策和积极吸收社会小额捐款4个方面提出适合我国国情的基础研究社会捐赠政策措施。     

Personality and cognitive skills in network of friends,for multi-ethnic schools

In a multi-ethnic society, friendship among children might be expected to be overwhelmingly shaped by ethnicity and cultural heritage. Using an original panel data-set of classmate networks in multi-ethnic primary schools near Florence, Italy, ($N=396$ children in 2nd and 5th grade), we show instead that cognitive skills and personality traits matter as much as ethnicity in shaping friendships, thus playing the role of elective affinities. We test whether friends affect a child’s personality more than the other way round: to do this, we estimate peer effects. We only find non-significant effect of peers on math grades and a measure of intelligence (KBIT). For personality traits, peer effects are significant only for Extraversion. These findings are crucial for design of immigration policies: rather than emphasizing differences among ethnic groups, a farsighted policy could try to point these elective affinities among individuals.