Gift giving is thought to be welfare decreasing. This claim rests on two key assumptions, namely, full information as to the whereabouts of all goods and the ability to reach the stores that contain desired goods costlessly. In this paper, we replace these two assumptions with the more realistic assumption of uncertainty about the location of goods. As a result, search costs ensue. In sharp con...

This paper reports an experiment evaluating the effect of gift giving on building trust. We have nested our explorations in the standard version of the investment game. Our gift treatment includes a dictator stage in which the trustee decides whether to give a gift to the trustor before both of them proceed to play the investment game. We observe that in such case the majority of trustees offer...

Two ethical frameworks have dominated the discussion of organ donation for long: that of property rights and that of gift-giving. However, recent years have seen a drastic rise in the number of philosophical analyses of the meaning of giving and generosity, which has been mirrored in ethical debates on organ donation and in critical sociological, anthropological and ethnological work on the gif...

Case 1: A 39-year-old man with chronic lower extremity lymphedema was admitted to the hospital with acute fever, chills, and left lower extremity pain, swelling, and erythema for the third time in as many months. Examination revealed a temperature of 39 degrees C (102.2 degrees F), and erythmatous induration on the left leg (Figure). The patient was treated with IV clindamycin and cefazolin, wi...

The ‡uctuations in incomes inherent in rural communities can be attenuated by reciprocal assistance. A model of reciprocal assistance based upon rational action and voluntary participation is presented. Individuals provide assistance only if the costs of so doing are outweighed by the bene...ts from expected future reciprocation. A distinction is made between general reciprocity where the count...

Gift giving is thought to be welfare decreasing. This claim rests on two key assumptions, namely, full information as to the whereabouts of all goods and the ability to reach the stores that contain desired goods costlessly. In this paper, we replace these two assumptions with the more realistic assumptions of uncertainty about the location of goods and search costs. In sharp contrast to existi...

Abstract Corporations have recently started incorporating employees’ prosocial preferences into their incentive schemes, including charitable donations (corporate giving). These are mainly discussed in conjunction with the external effects of a firm’s CSR strategy. However, this experiment examines effect on internal firm operations. Specifically, we investigate whether presence and structure c...

Charitable Giving as a Gift Exchange: Evidence from a Field Experiment This study reports data from a field experiment that was conducted to investigate the relevance of gift-exchange for charitable giving. Roughly 10,000 solicitation letters were sent to potential donors in the experiment. One third of the letters contained no gift, one third contained a small gift and one third contained a la...