Volunteerism,compassion and religiosity as drivers of donations practices

• The topic of donations is one of high relevance and has been widely covered in contemporary marketing literature. It is a topic of interest to both theoreticians and practitioners alike, particularly due to its implicit links to fundraising activities and research. The reality of what makes an individual donor ultimately part with his money and give it away to a nonprofit organization is a hot contemporary topic. This study looks into the role of religiosity as a predictor of donations practices. Also volunteerism and compassion, two acts of pro‐social behaviour are analysed as predictors of donations practices. Using data collected from a survey of 612 charity donors in Portugal, the results show unequivocally that religiosity does influence donations practices, and so being a predictor of donations practices. Moreover, pro‐social behaviour is a predictor of donations practices when in the case of volunteerism, but not in the form of compassion.
• The findings are particularly useful for nonprofit organizations that want to attract and retain individual charitable donors and may also help to increase donation regularity, to obtain higher amounts, and donations both to religious and to secular organizations. Finally, it can be stated that the understanding of religiosity sheds light on knowledge about donations practices, and that this study also makes an important contribution to academia, as it is the first study conducted in Portugal that assesses the drivers of donations practices.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Extreme Value Theory and Statistics of Univariate Extremes: A Review

Statistical issues arising in modelling univariate extremes of a random sample have been successfully used in the most diverse fields, such as biometrics, finance, insurance and risk theory. Statistics of univariate extremes (SUE), the subject to be dealt with in this review paper, has recently faced a huge development, partially because rare events can have catastrophic consequences for human activities, through their impact on the natural and constructed environments. In the last decades, there has been a shift from the area of parametric SUE, based on probabilistic asymptotic results in extreme value theory, towards semi‐parametric approaches. After a brief reference to Gumbel's block methodology and more recent improvements in the parametric framework, we present an overview of the developments on the estimation of parameters of extreme events and on the testing of extreme value conditions under a semi‐parametric framework. We further discuss a few challenging topics in the area of SUE. © 2014 The Authors. International Statistical Review © 2014 International Statistical Institute     

Product Unbundling in the Travel Industry: The Economics of Airline Bag Fees

This paper provides theory and evidence on airline bag fees, offering insights into a real‐world case of product unbundling. The theory predicts that an airline's fares should fall when it introduces a bag fee, but that the full‐trip price (the bag fee plus the new fare) could either rise or fall. The empirical evidence presented in the paper provides strong confirmation of the first prediction. The data also suggest that the average fare falls by less than the bag fee itself so that the full price of a trip rises for passengers who choose to check bags.     

THEORY AND EVIDENCE IN PSYCHOLOGY AND ECONOMICS ABOUT MOTIVATION CROWDING OUT: A POSSIBLE CONVERGENCE?

The empirical relevance of motivation crowding out is a controversial issue in economics and psychology. As already pointed out by Frey and Jegen ( 2001 ), this is partly due to the historical development of two distinct and parallel strands of literature that stem from different theoretical traditions, have radically different tenets and therefore, are difficult to reconcile. In this survey, we go back to the details of the debates that took place independently among psychologists and economists, and sketch an integrative interdisciplinary approach likely to favor a more fruitful collaboration between economics and psychology. From this perspective, experimental economics (both field and laboratory) is viewed as a major research field shedding new light on the conditions of relevance of motivation crowding out.     

Trading Partners and Trading Volumes: Implementing the Helpman–Melitz–Rubinstein Model Empirically

Helpman, Melitz and Rubinstein [Quarterly Journal of Economics (2008) Vol. 123, pp. 441–487] (HMR) present a rich theoretical model to study the determinants of bilateral trade flows across countries. The model is then empirically implemented through a two‐stage estimation procedure. We argue that this estimation procedure is only valid under the strong distributional assumptions maintained in the article. Statistical tests using the HMR sample, however, clearly reject such assumptions. Moreover, we perform numerical experiments which show that the HMR two‐stage estimator is very sensitive to departures from the assumption of homoskedasticity. These findings cast doubts on any inference drawn from the empirical implementation of the HMR model.     

A Qualitative Analysis to Determine the Domains and Skills Necessary to Lead in Public Health

Leadership programs in public health have been declining in numbers since 2012. The decline in training programs could be due to the lack of outcome‐based results and the lack of a manageable set of standardized skills needed for public health leadership. A comprehensive study was completed in two phases to determine if the current model of public health leadership institutes is effective at generating outcome‐based results. The following paper will focus on the first phase of the study. The first phase included a qualitative analysis to determine the domains, definitions, and skills needed to lead. An analysis of the skills, domains, definitions, and traits included in five established and commonly used leadership models/theories in public health leadership development (Transformational, Servant, Appreciative, Collaborative, and Emotional Intelligence leadership) plus the National Public Health Leadership Development Network (NLN) Leadership for Community Health, Safety & Resilience Competency Framework was completed. Of the 161 different skills, definitions, traits, and/or competencies from the five leadership models and the NLN competency framework, 123 were determined to be related to one of six domains needed for leadership and were defined into 21 skills. The findings could lead to more uniformity in public health leadership development and evaluation.     

The impact of referendums on the centralisation of public goods provision: a political economy approach

The paper compares decision-making on the centralisation of public goods provision in the presence of regional externalities under representative and direct democratic institutions. A model with two regions, two public goods and regional spillovers is developed in which uncertainty over the true preferences of candidates makes strategic delegation impossible. The political economy argument against centralisation of Besley and Coate (J Public Econ 87:2611–2637, 2003) does therefore not apply. Instead, it is shown that the existence of rent extraction by delegates alone suffices to make cooperative centralisation more likely through representative democracy under reasonable assumptions. In the case of non-cooperative centralisation, the more extensive possibilities for institutional design under representative democracy increase the likelihood of centralisation. Direct democracy may thus be interpreted as a federalism-preserving institution.     

Wechselwirkungen von Finanzkrise und Rechnungslegung

Praxis / MagazinTermine

Termine     

Paid Parental Leave: An Employee Right or Still An Ideal? An Analysis of the Situation in Québec in Comparison with North America

Over recent years, parental leave policy in Canada has evolved quite considerably. Since 2001, Canadian employees have a right to a 1 year paid parental leave; those in the province of Québec have a better paid, more flexible regime. This paper first shows that Québec is somewhat of an exception in the North American context, with its inclusive mode of governance which contributes to positive policies in terms of family and childcare. This is due to a few elements: the recognition of a declining birthrate, but more importantly the significant involvement and actions of women’s advocacy organizations, in the context of an inclusive governance of family policy. We will defend the hypothesis that Québec has adopted a cumulative (or work–family balance) model in the field of work–family relation, while the US and English Canada tend to still resort mainly to a laissez-faire attitude, which to this day has limited employee rights in terms of parental leave, but also in terms of child care.