Demand for collective goods in private nonprofit markets: Can fundraising expenditures help overcome free-rider behavior?

Indirect reciprocity can overcome free-rider problems on costly moral assessment

Indirect reciprocity is one of the major mechanisms of the evolution of cooperation. Because constant monitoring and accurate evaluation in moral assessments tend to be costly, indirect reciprocity can be exploited by cost evaders. A recent study crucially showed that a cooperative state achieved by indirect reciprocators is easily destabilized by cost evaders in the case with no supportive mec...

Can Gaming Be Used in the Nonprofit Sector for More than Fundraising?

This paper explores new, game-based volunteering platforms in the sciences and discusses their viability for nonprofit organizations, which have long used gaming for fundraising but not typically in other aspects of their operations. The paper unfolds in two parts. Examples of game-based volunteering platforms in the sciences are examined in Part 1, and their broader significance discussed in r...

Can Savings Help Overcome Income Instability

This brief explores the role that savings can play in alleviating material hardship for low-income households. We use longitudinal household data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to examine whether modest liquid assets—sometimes referred to as precautionary or emergency savings, a rainy-day fund, or ready money—can protect against impending hardship for low-income hous...

Where Private Enterprise Can Help

Intuition Can Help in Segmenting Industrial Markets

After pointing out some differences between theory and practice in segmenting industrial market, this article reviews the literature on the subject. The latter reveals that too mechanistic or too quantitative segmentation methods are quite inappropriate for the industrial environment where the markets are concentrated and the data sometimes rare. Based on this observation, the article, finally,...