Assigning a subjective value to a contribution to a public good often requires reflection. For many reasons, this reflection may be put off, reinforcing the underprovision of public goods. We hypothesise that nudging individuals to reflect on whether to contribute to a public good leads to the formation of issue-specific altruistic preferences. The hypothesis is tested in a large-scale field ex...

Data are compiled from the tax records of 29 major environmental organizations for the period 1980-1994 to identify factors that influence voluntary contributions. I examine the effects of organizational characteristics, such as fundraising expenditures and alternative sources of revenue, along with the impact of general economic conditions and the political climate. I find that government gran...

Incomplete information about (independent) private valuations of charities by potential donors provides an important strategic rationale for announcement of donations during fundraising drives and explains why donors may add to their initial contributions after learning about contributions made by others. In a two-stage fundraising drive where potential donors may contribute at either or both s...

Charities often let the sum of contributions determine the quantity of services to provide. Some organizations, however, have the option of setting a minimum threshold necessary for provision of the public good, allowing donors to pledge donations contingent on the threshold being reached. Contributions are only collected when su±cient funds have been pledged. We show that contribution-maximizi...

This paper presents a model in which anonymous charitable donations are rationalized by two human tendencies drawn from the psychology literature. The first is people’s disproportionate disposition to help those they agree with while the second is the dependence of peoples’ self-esteem on the extent to which they perceive that others agree with them. Government spending crowds out the charity t...

The tax code in the United States historically has provided quite a favorable environment for nonprofit institutions. Not only are such institutions usually exempt from taxation, but contributions made to them are deductible in the individual, corporate, and estate taxes. Other tax provisions, such as the exclusion of scholarships and certain fringe benefits from income, the use of tax-exempt b...

We experimentally study the effect of alternative campaign finance systems – as characterized by different information structure about donors – on donations, election outcomes, political candidates' policy choices, and welfare. Three alternative campaign finance systems are considered: a full anonymity (FA) system in which neither the politicians nor the voters are informed about the donors' id...

each country faces a continuing challenge to collect enough blood to meet the national needs. according to who, there should be at least 20 blood donations per 1,000 population for developing countries, in kazakhstan this indicator was only 16.8 in 2011. thus, we conducted an epidemiological assessment and drew a map of the regional distribution of blood and plasma donations in kazakhstan durin...

Money is central in US politics, and most campaign contributions stem from a tiny, wealthy elite. Like other political acts, campaign donations are known to be socially contagious. We study how campaign donations diffuse through a network of more than 50,000 elites and examine how connectivity among previous donors reinforces contagion. We find that the diffusion of donations is driven by indep...

Regurgitations of blood among vampire bats appear to benefit both direct and indirect fitness. To maximize inclusive fitness, reciprocal food sharing should occur among close kin. Why then do females with kin roost-mates help non-kin? We tested the hypothesis that helping non-kin increases a bat's success at obtaining future donations by expanding its network of potential donors. On six occasio...