Testing how information about cost-effectiveness,cause preferences,and geographic preferences interact to affect philanthropic giving

The broad instrumental philanthropy movement advocates for considerations of cost-effective impact in donation decisions. Within that broader movement, the effective altruism movement goes as far as to advocate for cause neutrality and geographic neutrality when prioritizing cost-effectiveness in charity. We present a survey experiment that examined how information about cost-effectiveness, cause area preferences, and geographic preferences interact to affect philanthropic giving. The experiment varied these three dimensions in a hypothetical giving situation and found that cost-effectiveness information had the strongest influence on hypothetical giving. Participants gave most when presented with charities that were shown to be highly cost-effective, local/domestic, and that matched their preferred cause area. Understanding how these three considerations interact to affect donors is important as donors continue to desire more information about the cost-effective impact of their donation.     

Economies of scope in the local telephone exchange market

Using cost data generated by an optimization model, we evaluate the degree of economies of scope in the local telephone exchange market. We find that economies of scope between switched and non-switched services are a decreasing function of customer density, while there are strong economies of scope, regardless of customer density, within the switched telephone market.The authors gratefully acknowledge partial funding from the National Regulatory Research Institute at the Ohio State University. This work was made possible in part by research computing facilities provided by the City University of New York and Tulane University. We thank Editor Michael Crew, two anonymous referees, and David Malueg for useful comments and suggestions. Remaining errors are, of course, our own responsibility.The computer software (compiled for use on MS-DOS machines) and user instructions developed for this paper are available at reproduction cost from the authors at either address. The authors are willing to collaborate with interested researchers in modifications of the source code; however, source code will not be distributed due to confidentiality restrictions.     

Disconnecting: Understanding decline in universal service

At a time when choices for voice service and funding for universal service were growing, the United States experienced an unprecedented drop in household telephone penetration. Universal service in voice telephony is generally taken for granted in the United States. However, recent data from the FCC shows a significant decline in the number of U.S. households that have a telephone of any kind (including mobile), from a peak in telephone penetration of 95.5% in March 2003 down to 92.9% in November 2005. This decline is both statistically significant and meaningful, as approximately 2.6% of U.S. households could not easily reach 911 for emergencies. This study uses regression analysis of state-level data to determine what drove this decline in universal service. The results demonstrate that the recent decline in universal service in the U.S. is driven by an increase in black population, inadequate consumer protection laws, and increases in wireless telephones per capita. Lifeline effectiveness does not appear to mitigate the decline in penetration, while Link-Up effectiveness may have a limited effect.     

From market failure to organisational failure

In this paper, we argue that environmental economists who have dedicated their attention to problems of market and regulatory failure have been remiss in ignoring the potential for failure in the one institution that actually manages environmental resources - the business firm. Traditionally the firm has been modelled as a unitary, rational, optimising persona ficta. There is, however, abundant empirical and theoretical evidence to suggest that the business firm is an imperfect institution in that there are systematic deviations between the environmental objectives of the firm's leaders (principals) and the actions of the firm's employees (agents) which determine environmental performance. In the paper, we draw parallels between the causes of market failure and public policy tools to correct them on one hand and the causes of organisational failure and the management tools suited to their remedy on the other. Although much of the paper is concerned with the interrelationship between public policy that promotes sustainability and business policy to fashion a sustainable enterprise, our work is relevant irrespective of the reason why a firm's principal may want to improve environmental performance. No matter what the reason, the principal must concern him- or herself with operationalising objectives in management systems. It is consistent with the precautionary principle to assume that employees will do what the firm measures and rewards, not what its principal says is important. We build a verbal model, based on the language of principal-agent theory, to analyse how different management instruments might be employed to improve the firm's environmental performance. The model is one of three decision makers in a vertical hierarchy. Each of the first two has various instruments at its disposal to influence the behaviour of the agents subordinate to it. In the end, the goal is to ensure consistency between social, economic, and personal objectives. The specific management tools we analyse, with reference to the formal modelling which has appeared in the literature, include the compensation system, quantification and monitoring of non-financial objectives, internal pricing, horizontal task restructuring, centralisation vs. decentralisation of decision making, and corporate sanctions of agents for negligence. We conclude the paper by reiterating that the corporate policy statements to the effect that the firm should respect the environment are insufficient to ensure that result. In addition, firms' principals must operationalise that goal in the systems of measurement and control which govern the behaviour of those who really matter - the employees.     

Did Canadian welfare reform work? The effects of new reform strategies on social assistance participation

This paper measures the extent to which declines in social assistance (SA) participation were associated with novel and aggressive reforms referred to as new reform strategies: work requirements, diversion, earning exemptions and time limits. Controlling for province‐specific benefit levels, eligibility requirements, GDP growth, labour market conditions and demographics, SA participation rates were more than one percentage point lower (equivalent to a 13% decline) in provinces with new reforms. Work requirements with strong sanctions had the sharpest negative associations. New reform strategies explain at least 10% of observed declines in SA participation, twice that of benefit levels and eligibility requirements.     

The Introduction of Automatic Switching into the Bell System: Market versus Institutional Influences

The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in the economic literature. While much is known about nineteenth century Southern black legal and material conditions, less is known about how their nineteenth century biological conditions were related to institutional change and the physical environment. Average Southern black statures ironically increased during the antebellum period and declined — at least temporarily - after emancipation. On the other hand, average Southern white statures declined throughout the nineteenth century. It is geography and direct sunlight (insolation) that present an additional attribute of nineteenth century black and white stature, and greater insolation is documented here to be associated with taller black and white statures.