An experimental test of cause-related marketing and charitable giving

Tax Evasion and Charitable Giving—An Experimental Approach∗

The paper introduces tax evasion through subsidies due to false declarations of charitable donations. The study distinguishes between a rebate and match subsidy in an experimental setting. Under the rebate subsidy the individual gets the subsidy, while under the match subsidy the charity organization gets the subsidy. First, I develop a theoretical model of charitable giving and tax evasion. Se...

Charitable Giving

In 2005 charitable giving in the United States totaled over $260 billon, or around 1.9% of personal income, making it a significant fraction of the economy. Individual giving accounted for 77% of this total, while foundations accounted for 12%, bequests for 7%, and corporations for 5% (Giving USA, 2006). Almost 70% of US households report giving to charity. While the US typically has one of the...

Charitable Giving

(Un)Informed Charitable Giving∗

Evidence suggests little informed giving. To understand this behavior, we examine a model of charitable giving with costly information. We find that an individual who considers a smaller contribution is less likely to seek information, and thus the percentage of informed giving diminishes as the population grows. We also find that a direct grant to the charity exacerbates crowding-out by discou...

Partial Reporting: An Example from Charitable Giving∗

Of necessity, many tax-price elasticities are calculated from tax return data. Survey data on families’ charitable giving and reporting on their tax returns indicate that reporting is a significant part of tax-price elasticity estimates. Roughly a quarter of the tax-price elasticity estimated from tax returns represents changes in reporting as opposed to changes in actual donations. These resul...