THE IMPACT OF TAX PRICE CHANGES ON CHARITABLE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NEEDY

Eliminating or reducing the federal charitable deduction can have serious impacts on the level of charitable donations. Tax price elasticity estimates from a multivariate sample selection model indicate that changing the deduction to a 12% tax credit would have reduced individual donations in 2012 by 18.9% if applied to itemizing taxpayers and by 10.5% if extended to nonitemizers. Elimination of the deduction would have led to a 35% reduction in individual charitable donations. Even if coupled with cuts in marginal tax rates, eliminating the charitable deduction will still likely result in substantial reductions given the inelastic income elasticities of charitable donations. The estimates justify the ardent opposition of many in the nonprofit sector to the more radical proposals for changing the tax treatment of charitable contributions. (JEL D34, C34)     

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.

     

Time vs. money — The supply of voluntary labor and charitable donations across Europe

In spite of its importance for civil society, we know relatively little about the way in which individuals spend their time and money in the charitable provision of goods and services. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive picture of the philanthropic behavior in Europe by analyzing both, the correlates of individuals' charitable cash donations and volunteer labor as well as their interdependence. Using data from the European Social Survey, we document a positive correlation between time and money contributions on the individual as well as on the country level. In addition, we find evidence that individuals substitute time donations by money donations as their time offered to the market increases. Moreover, analyzing philanthropic behavior on the disaggregated level reveals large differences in the determinants and the relationship of time and money donations in Europe – both across different types of voluntary organizations and across different welfare regimes.     

政治关联、慈善捐赠与政府补助*--来自中国亏损上市公司的经验证据

文章以2009－2012年中国亏损上市公司作为研究样本,运用社会网络理论,分析和检验了高管的政治关联对亏损企业通过慈善捐赠行为获得政府补助的影响。研究结果表明：第一,有政治关联的亏损企业比无政治关联的亏损企业更容易出于获取政府支持而进行慈善捐赠,高管的政治关联广度相对于其政治关联深度对亏损企业慈善捐赠的正向影响更大,同时高管的地方政治关联相对于其中央政治关联对亏损企业慈善捐赠的正向影响也更大;第二,基于“利益互惠”的原则以及对企业积极履行社会责任的鼓励,政府通常会倾向于对进行慈善捐赠的企业给予更多的补助;第三,相对于无政治关联的亏损企业,有政治关联的亏损企业的慈善捐赠能够帮助其获得更多的政府补助,相对于中央政治关联,地方政治关联对亏损企业通过慈善捐赠获得政府补助的“支持效应”更加明显,同时政治关联广度更宽的亏损企业也通过慈善捐赠获得了更多的政府补助。文章的研究结论深化了对中国亏损上市公司慈善捐赠的动机及其经济后果的认识,为相关部门规范企业慈善行为也提供了有益的启示。     

Reworking the Wage Curve: Exploring the consistency of the model across time,space and demographic group

This paper extends Blanchflower & Oswald's (1994) work on the wage curve to the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. The wage curve is more elastic in US metropolitan areas than prior research shows for the nation as a whole, and the wage curve varies over the business cycle, becoming more elastic in periods of higher unemployment. The most striking finding is that black workers have a more elastic wage curve than do white workers. Estimating the wage curve with the non-employment rate, a measure of underemployment, shows elasticities that are substantially higher than for wage curves estimated with the unemployment rate. This trend further increases the negative effects on pay for blacks, who are more likely than white workers to be underemployed.     

Pigou on business cycles and unemployment: an anti-gold-standard view

Abstract

This note examines A. C. Pigou's views on the practical issue of high unemployment in the 1920s. In his Industrial Fluctuations, Pigou emphasized that the monetary aspect of business cycles was much more important to fluctuations in unemployment than wage adjustment. In a journal article, however, he stated that major part of the high unemployment should be attributed to the failure of money wage adjustment. I argue that, on balance, Pigou attached greater importance to monetary problems than to the wage rigidity.     

Charitable donations by UK households: evidence from the Family Expenditure Survey

This paper reports estimates based on both standard Tobit and generalized Tobit techniques of the determinants of charitable giving in the UK using 1984 Family Expenditure Survey data. This is the first such study using UK data.

Separate estimates are presented of the determinants of participation and of the level of donations by giving households. Participation is seen to be sensitive to income, the tax-price of giving, and a range of demographic variables, while the level of donations varies primarily with income. Donations are found to be inelastic with respect to changes in disposable income.     

Are contributions of time and money substitutes or complements?

This article empirically investigates the relationship between donations of time and money using Canadian tax policy reforms that changed the tax price of charitable donations. The 1988 reform where a charitable tax deduction was converted to a credit and the 2000 reform in provincial income taxes provide tax price variations plausibly exogenous to individuals’ unobserved heterogeneity. Our estimates on cross-price effects imply that individuals make more time donations as the tax price of charitable donations increases and hence money and time donations are substitutes, as some theories would imply. This contrasts with earlier findings using cross-sectional data.     

Analysing the determinants of bank efficiency: the case of Italian banks

Since PHILLIPS (1958) wrote his landmark article on the relationship between money wage rates and unemployment, much work has been conducted concerning ‘Phillips’ curves'. While some writers, such as LIPSEY (1960), SAMUELSON and SOLOW (1960) and HANSEN (1970), remained relatively close to Phillips' original model, other strayed from it. BRECHLING (1968), DICKS-MIREAUX and DOW (1959), ECKSTEIN (1968), ECKSTEIN and WILSON (1962), HAMERMESH (1970), KUH (1967), PERRY (1966), PHELPS (1968), and TAYLOR (1970) are a few researchers who felt Phillips' formulation did not adequately explain changes in money wage rates. Their approaches ranged from formulating entirely new models to merely adding other explanatory variables to Phillips' model.

The present study estimates a Phillips' curve for the United Kingdom within the framework of Phillips' basic hypothesis. He grouped all observations according to unemployment levels, averaged the wage changes for each group, and fitted a curve by trial and error to the compact body of data. The current approach fits a curve to all data points using a direct estimation procedure. Only two basic variables are used; money wage rates and unemployment.

REES and HAMILTON (1967) pointed out that the estimated relation between wage changes and unemployment is highly sensitive to the form of the variables and the regression employed. One can obtain widely scattered results by either changing the type of numerical analysis on existing data or by changing the defined variables. It would not be surprising if the results of the present analysis differ from previous works. Not only are some of the data sources different from those previously employed but the numerical analysis is entirely new to Phillips' curve theory. Spline theory is used to fit the Phillips' curve.     

Non-constant Returns,Pareto Optimality and Competitive Equilibrium

Competitive equilibrium is not Pareto optimal if returns to scale are not constant, except in special and accidental circumstances. This result is demonstrated using a classical production model; it holds quite generally and independently of all other sources of Pareto inefficiency, such as externalities, imperfect information and quantity constraints. It establishes a general and ubiquitous basis for critique of the 'invisible hand' ideology, which still dominates both the textbooks and wider reaches of social thought.     

Property rights,mobile capital,and comparative advantage

Recent papers show that imperfect property rights to a natural resource – a sector-specific factor–can be a source of comparative advantage. In these models, weaker property rights attract labor–the only mobile factor – to the resource sector, increasing the country's comparative advantage for that sector. If capital in addition to labor is mobile, and if the benefits of capital are non-excludable or if the degree of property rights is endogenous, a deterioration of property rights has ambiguous effects on comparative advantage and on the equilibrium wage/rental ratio.     

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。     

Lottery expenses and charitable contributions – Taiwan's experience

Individuals’ contributions are affected by their lottery outlays if they consider their spending of lottery funds on charities to be a substitute for or a complement to their direct charitable contributions. This study investigates the effect of lottery outlays on charitable contributions based on the experience of lottery introduction in Taiwan. The estimates reveal that lottery outlays exert a positive effect on charitable contributions while the quantitative impact is significant. This study thus provides evidence ameliorating the pessimistic prospect that people may reduce their direct charitable contributions when they spend more on lotteries. Possible explanations for the positive effect are also discussed.     

Mr Keynes,the Classics and the new Keynesians: A suggested formalisation

Abstract

The paper suggests a new Keynesian model of the General Theory. A reduced form entails a diagram with three curves relating employment and the real wage, which represent the two fundamental classical postulates and the principle of effective demand. This diagram illustrates better than IS–LM the generality of Keynes's theory, clarifying the distinction between voluntary and involuntary unemployment. Other significant features are the role of the distribution of expected interest rates among heterogeneous agents, whether dispersed or concentrated, in shaping the LM curve, as well as the role of wage competitiveness constraints as a foundation of Keynes's relative wage hypothesis.     

Gift Exchange and the Business Cycle: The Fair Wage Strikes Back

We extend the benchmark real business cycle model amending technology for fair wage considerations. Effort depends on current, alternative, and past wages. Past wages are treated as the worker's past wages (personal norm) or as the past wages of the society (social norm). This last model reproduces the high variability of employment, the low variability of wages, and the low wage–employment correlation without requiring a second source of impulsions. Wages and employment dynamics are adequately captured when norms adjust slowly to the environment. Fair wages are thus useful to solve the business cycle puzzle when we allow for intertemporal wage comparisons. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Number: E24     

A Theoretical Model of the Effects of Public Funding on Saving Decisions by Charitable Nonprofit Service Providers

Why do charitable nonprofit, service‐providing organizations save? What are the tradeoffs between using income to build up cash reserves and serving more clients? Saving may generate income, protect the organization against a drop in donations, and increase the organization's chances of survival. Saving, though, may affect the likelihood that nonprofits receive private and public funding. We model the relationship among private and public income, economic conditions, and nonprofit savings. We find that anticipation of government help during difficult times tends to reduce the amount of saving done by the nonprofit. This effect is strengthened if government officials view unspent donations as indicative of a lack of need. Both these effects provide a strong incentive for nonprofits to spend on current consumption rather than to save for the future, and thus to increase the burden on the public purse.     

How close to home does charity begin?

ABSTRACT

This paper uses a field experiment to analyse the extent to which people are more inclined to support a charity focused on people or causes in their own region, compared to regions in other parts of the country. New Zealand landowners were incentivized to take part in an online survey by being told they could choose a charity from a list of four that would receive a $10 donation if they completed the survey. Importantly, the charities are based in different regions of the country. We find evidence of a significant declining radius of altruism: not only do people prefer to support charities in their own area, the further away a charity is located, the less likely people are to support it. These findings highlight the importance of geographic distance (independent of social distance) in charitable giving.     

Real wages,productivity and economic growth in the G7, 1960–2002

Abstract

This paper investigates empirical real wage and productivity dynamics in the G7 countries using annual data for 1960–2002. The findings suggest that the level of labor productivity is positively related to GDP growth in all countries, and real wages are positively related to growth in some of them. The results tend to confirm the ‘profit paradox’. This postulates a positive relationship between economic growth and the aggregate profit share, and suggests that the frequent support of business interests for deflationary economic policies is a puzzle.     

Labor supply,uncertainty, and efficient taxation

We analyze the structure of an optimal linear income tax when workers are uncertain about their wages at the time they choose their labor supplies. Background for the normative analysis is provided by an outline of the positive theory of wage taxation and labor supply under uncertainty. It is then shown that given imperfect information about wages, lump-sum taxation is not necessarily efficient. Because a wage tax reduces the riskiness of wage income, some combination of a lump-sum tax and a wage tax generally will minimize excess burden.     

Profitability of mergers in food manufacturing

Two issues are examined. The statistical significance of a number of socio-economic factors that affect the level of charitable giving are evaluated. Family wealth and age of the head of household tend to be significant determinants of charitable giving, regardless of whether it is to all charities or to religious charities only. Such is not the case for the price of giving; for instance, the price of giving is an important determinant of all charitable contributions, but almost non-existent as a determinant for religious donations. Results such as this suggest that changes in marginal tax rates prompted by a switch to a tax credit as a substitute for a deduction, and hence a change in the price of giving, may have virtually no impact on contributions to religious organizations but may affect conntributions to other charitable organizations. The extent to which some socio-economic factors changed in relative importance as determinants of charitable giving from 1982 to 1986 is also reviewed.