determinants of donations in private nonprofit markets abstract we estimate the responsiveness of donations to a number of economic variables including price advertising and the availability of revenue from such other sources as government grants and program service sales utilizing a set of irs data on individual nonprofit organizations in each of seven industries including hospitals and higher education for the years 1982 1994 we find distinct overall patterns as well as notable variation across industries a nonprofit organization s fundraising expenditures are estimated to exert two countervailing effects on donations the direct advertising and information effect augments donations while the indirect effect on the price of donating has a negative effect we do not find evidence that fundraising is carried to the profit maximizing levels in some industries fundraising is substantially short of that level while in other industries it is excessive implying that the marginal return to fundraising is exceeded by the cost focusing on whether revenue from other sources affects donations to a nonprofit organization we find evidence that revenue from either government grants or from the organization s own program sales activity generally does not crowd out private donations to the contrary in most industries there are significant positive effects

are church and state substitutes evidence from the 1996 welfare reform abstract churches provide community services similar to those provided by the government but there has been no convincing analysis of the extent to which church activity can substitute for government activity to address this important issue this paper uses a new panel data set of presbyterian church usa congregations to regress both church member donations and a church s community spending on a number of variables including government welfare expenditures a provision of the 1996 welfare law that decreased the availability and use of welfare services by non citizens serves as an instrument to identify the causal effect of government spending on church activity the results show that church activities substitute for government activities extrapolating the findings to all denominations the estimated crowd out effect lies between 20 and 38 cents on the dollar the results are subjected to a number of robustness tests

food insecurity and public assistance this paper examines if welfare programs reduce the probability that vulnerable households experience food deprivation because of financial constraints although the 1996 welfare reform legislation specifically limited the eligibility of immigrant households to receive assistance many states chose to protect their immigrant populations by offering state funded aid to these groups i exploit these changes in eligibility rules to examine the link between food insecurity and public assistance the evidence indicates that a 10 percentage point cut in the fraction of the population that receives public assistance increases the fraction of food insecure households by about 5 percentage points

the residential market of hong kong rational or irrational the current study attempts to investigate the proposition that hong kong residential market is only driven by a rational speculative bubble in addition to fundamentals the fundamentals are chosen according to the present value model but will account for latent private information potential roles of other public information are also explored the study finds that the influence of the rational bubble on the price growth is highly significant however in contrast to seoul and singapore housing market xiao 2006 xiao and huang 2007 neither the fundamentals nor the rational bubble can explain much of the price growth in the market of concern this finding leaves large room for questioning whether or not this market is more prone to irrationality than its counterparts in seoul and singapore

mr smith and the preachers the economics of religion in the wealth of nations the extension of economic analysis to problems beyond the domain of formal markets and explicit prices represents a major recent intellectual development but economic imperialism is not new and was not invented in chicago adam smith in his wealth of nations extended economic reasoning to a variety of nonmarket exchange problems one example is his analysis of religious behavior smith viewed participation in religion as a rational device by which individual enhanced the value of their human capital he also explained the behavior of the clergy and other suppliers of religious services from an economic perspective

asset bubbles monetary policy and bank lending in japan an empirical investigation asset prices rose rapidly in japan during the latter half of the 1980s and then declined as quickly in the early 1990s their behaviour is consistent with the existence of speculative bubbles in these markets this paper investigates the dynamic relationships among stock and land prices in japan output and monetary and bank lending variables the results of causality tests and variance decompositions are reported for two time periods 1972 1501985 and 1986 1501991 the price bubbles affected each other in the first period although the size of this impact is dependent on the choice of variables in the vars in the bubble period there is strong evidence that the stock market bubble was determined by its own past and also influenced the land market bubble accounting for a significant proportion of the variance of the land market bubble however neither output the money supply nor the lending variables were significant in the causality tests or in explaining the variation of the two assset bubbles

demand for collective goods in private nonprofit markets can fundraising expenditures help overcome free rider behavior abstract economic theory ascribes the primary role in the provision of public goods to government this emphasis on government overlooks the role of the not for profit sector in providing collective type goods in this paper we seek to determine the factors influencing charitable contributions to private nonprofit organizations by estimating a demand function for the output of these collective good providers specifically we test the hypothesis that voluntary giving is responsive to conventional market variables such as advertising expenditures price and quality overall the results are strongly supportive

faith based charity and crowd out during the great depression abstract interest in religious organizations as providers of social services has increased dramatically in recent years churches in the u s were a crucial provider of social services through the early part of the twentieth century but their role shrank dramatically with the expansion in government spending under the new deal in this paper we investigate the extent to which the new deal crowded out church charitable spending in the 1930s we do so using a new nationwide data set of charitable spending for six large christian denominations matched to data on local new deal spending we instrument for new deal spending using measures of the political strength of a state s congressional delegation and confirm our findings using a different instrument based on institutional constraints on state relief spending with both instruments we find that higher government spending leads to lower church charitable activity crowd out was small as a share of total new deal spending 3 but large as a share of church spending our estimates suggest that benevolent church spending fell by 30 in response to the new deal and that government relief spending can explain virtually all of the decline in charitable church activity observed between 1933 and 1939

does the government crowd out private donations new evidence from a sample of non profit firms abstract during the 1980s government grants to non profit organizations declined dramatically and the price of private donations increased given there are different costs associated with government grants and private donations to non profits it is important to study the relationship between these two sources and determine whether government grants crowd out private donations i take a fresh look at the issue of crowd out and improve upon the literature by exploiting a panel data set that links private donations to non profit firms with the government grants they received i study 430 non profit shelter human services and other similar types of organizations that were in operation between 1982 and 1992 i find private donations to these non profits effectively do not change with changes in government grants after controlling for firm heterogeneity and political and economic factors under an ols specification in a 2sls specification after controlling for possible endogeneity of the government grants the estimated crowd out is significantly different from zero and one dollar on average the estimated crowd out is 50 cents

kids or cash exploring charter school responses to declining government revenues while the literature is extensive on school districts revenue sources less research has been done on the impact of donations on school district funds in this paper we extend the theoretical literature on crowding out of private donations by government grants for one type of nonprofit firm namely charter schools the theoretical model leads us to focus on the key relationships among fundraising effort enrollment which is tied to federal and state funding and donations using a dataset on texas charter schools we adopt a two stage approach to examine the empirical relationship between changes in nondonor revenues and the donations received by charter schools like the extensive empirical estimates of the effects of government grants on donations for other types of nonprofit firms we find evidence of crowding out with respect to our sample of charter schools we also find a significant positive effect of fundraising on donations with a 1 increase in fundraising associated to a 0 58 increase in donations a pattern consistent with overinvestment in fundraising enrollments exhibit a robust inverse relationship to changes in nondonor revenues jel h00 h32 h50

race and charitable church activity i introduction faith based organizations provide social services for more than 70 million americans annually johnson tompkins and webb 2002 of the more than 350 000 congregations in the country more than 85 support some type of social service activity solomon 2003 biddle 1992 estimates that each year congregations spend 24 billion dollars on philanthropic activities these actions have gained new relevance for policymakers as the availability of public funding for charitable church activity has dramatically increased in the past decade starting with the charitable choice provision of the 1996 welfare reform law and continuing with the creation of centers for faith based and community initiatives located in 11 different federal agencies policymakers have instituted a devolution of federal funds intended to provide community services in 2005 more than 2 1 billion dollars in government grants were awarded to religious organizations by federal agencies office of the press secretary 2006 1 some observers fear that this policy trend will encourage racial discrimination by congregations leonard 2002 as bartkowski and regis 2003 write congregational definitions of legitimate social problems that members care about are in actuality influenced by various considerations among them racialized perceptions of welfare recipients past studies by economists have postulated but not substantiated that churchgoers warrant special consideration as individuals whose actions are sensitive to community demographics e g alesina and la ferrara 2000 gruber 2005 alternately some policymakers have championed faith based organizations because they are not likely to display sensitivity to community demographics when providing services as president bush stated in a speech in 2002 faith based charities work daily miracles because above all they recognize the dignity of every citizen and the possibilities of every life office of the press secretary 2002 john diiulio the former director of the white house office of faith based and community initiatives argued for charitable choice by saying government at all levels blatantly denies the equal protection of the laws to low income urban african american and latino children and families who depend disproportionately on faith based organizations for both basic life necessities and the delivery of specific social welfare benefits diiulio 2002 there is also noneconomic research consistent with this view e g billiet 1995 johnson 1977 the goal of this article was to examine whether congregations are affected by the racial composition of the local community when deciding whether and how much charitable activity to provide exploring this relationship is valuable not only because it addresses a key policy debate but also because it contributes to existing economic work on diversity and redistribution much prior work on socioeconomic conditions and tastes for redistribution relies on hypothetical questions asked to respondents in the general social survey or in gallop polls examples include alesina and la ferrara 2005b luttmer 2001 fong 2001 this article examines how a community s racial composition affects actual charitable expenditures studying actual charitable activities will be valuable if individuals stated preferences are different from their actual preferences or if stated preferences are sensitive to the wording of a question as is the case in alesina and la ferrara 2005b to investigate the effect of race on charitable church activity we compare how racially homogeneous congregations respond to the community s racial composition relative to other congregations several factors support this approach first members of homogeneous congregations have ostensibly taken race into account when selecting a congregation to attend consequently these congregations may be especially likely to display sensitivity to a community s racial composition when providing charitable services

club goods and group identity evidence from islamic resurgence during the indonesian financial crisis this paper tests a model in which group identity in the form of religious intensity functions as ex post insurance i exploit relative price shocks induced by the indonesian financial crisis to demonstrate a causal relationship between economic distress and religious intensity koran study and islamic school attendance that is weaker for other forms of group identity consistent with ex post insurance credit availability reduces the effect of economic distress on religious intensity religious intensity alleviates credit constraints and religious institutions smooth consumption shocks across households and within households particularly for those who were less religious before the crisis

the effect of implicit contracts on the movement of wages over the business cycle evidence from micro data in this paper we address the question of whether wages are affected by labor market conditions in a manner more consistent with a contract approach than with a standard spot market model from a simple implicit contract model we derive implications about the links between wages and past labor market conditions using individual data from the current population survey and the panel study of income dynamics we find that an implicit contract model with costless mobility describes these links better than either a simple spot market model or an implicit contract model with costly mobility

pay or pray the impact of charitable subsidies on religious attendance abstract the economic argument for subsidizing charitable giving relies on the positive externalities of charitable activities particularly from the religious institutions that are the largest recipients of giving but the net external effects of subsidies to religious giving will also depend on a potentially important indirect effect as well impacts on religious participation religious participation can be either a complement to or a substitute with the level of charitable giving understanding these spillover effects of charitable giving may be quite important given the existing observational literature that suggests that religiosity is a major determinant of well being among americans in this paper i investigate the impact of charitable subsidies on a measure of religious participation attendance at religious services i do so by using data over three decades from the general social survey as well as confirming the impact of such subsidies on religious giving using the consumer expenditure survey i find strong evidence that religious giving and religious attendance are substitutes larger subsidies to charitable giving lead to more religious giving but less religious attendance with an implied elasticity of attendance with respect to religious giving of as much as 1 1 these results have important implications for the debate over charitable subsidies they also serve to validate economic models of religious participation

the effects of implicit contracts on wages evidence from the japanese labor market abstract this paper tests whether wages in japan s labor market are determined by current or past labor market conditions the empirical results are consistent with a model suggesting that labor market mobility may be limited and costly in japan for men

negative publicity and catholic schools i introduction catholic education makes up a large part of the united states k 12 educational system catholic schools educate over one third of all private school students more elementary and secondary students than all other religious schools combined national center for education statistics nces 2007 however catholic education is becoming less prevalent between 1990 and 2007 the number of catholic schools decreased by 14 from 8 719 to 7 498 while enrollment declined by 7 from 2 498 870 to 2 320 651 1 the mainstream media has covered this trend beginning with closings in the early 1990s foderaro 1990 private schools enroll 11 of elementary and secondary school students 39 of private school students enroll in catholic schools 2 catholic schools historically have served a predominantly urban minority population with some success research generally finds modest gains in educational attainment particularly for minority students e g altonji et al 2005 evans and schwab 1995 neal 1997 there is evidence that catholic schools raise student academic achievement and reduce adolescent risky behaviors figlio and ludwig 2000 figlio and stone 2000 3 the current decline in catholic schooling reflects diminished opportunities for students to enroll in alternatives to public schools this decline is particularly troubling for the low income urban minority students who have particularly benefited from catholic schools in the past neal 1997 the decline in private schooling options also lowers the level of competition among schools the decrease in competition may worsen the outcomes of public school students hoxby 1994 we consider potential explanations for the decline in catholic schooling in the united states changing demographics changing income levels and public awareness of sexual abuse and allegations immigration into and within the united states particularly of the traditionally catholic hispanic population likely affected demand for catholic schooling o keefe 1996 suggests that falling income per capita near existing catholic schools led to school closings further the negative publicity from the sexual abuse crisis in the catholic church may have impacted the availability of and demand for catholic schooling using diocese level panel data on catholic schooling we empirically examine the importance of each of these factors we develop two proxy measures of negative publicity based on the press coverage and on plausibly public notifications of abuse allegations we find that negative publicity is associated with a reduction in the availability of catholic schools however its effect is small allegations related to the abuse cases account for about 5 of the decline in catholic schools changing demographics particularly increases in the hispanic population explain a larger proportion of the current decline in catholic schooling ii an overview of catholic school enrollment and catholic schools in the united states the catholic church is organized into dioceses and archdioceses each administered by a bishop or archbishop there are 175 of these in the united states with each state and the district of columbia having at least one dioceses for the most part follow county lines texas with 14 is the state that has the most dioceses the average state has approximately 3 5 dioceses catholic schools tend to be operated with financial backing from the local diocese in combination with revenue from tuition and direct donations diocesan support ranges from a low of around 5 of school funding coming from dioceses in the south and west to a high of about 50 in the midwest gero and meitler 2003 figure 1 presents the percent of school aged children enrolled in catholic schools and the number of catholic schools for 1990 to 2007 4 the number of catholic schools declined in the early 1990s the decline slowed in the mid 1990s and accelerated again around 2004

reflections on the socio economic correlates of health income education occupation age sex marital status and ethnicity are all correlated with health in one context or another this paper reflects on the difficulties encountered in deriving robust scientific conclusions from these correlations or drawing reliable policy applications interactions among the variables nonlinearities casual inference and possible mechanisms of action are discussed strategies for future work are suggested and researchers are urged to pay special attention to possible interactions among health genes and socio economic variables

emergent extremism in a multi agent model of religious clubs i introduction religious extremism is as old as religion itself but the tendency to promote militancy and terrorism from within extremist religions appears to be much more common now than in times past juergensmeyer 2001 stern 2003 wiktorowicz 2005 1 today s terrorists routinely frame their objectives in religious terms and organize their activities within religious movements this shift is not due to increased militancy within religion as a whole not even within the stricter subset of religious groups commonly labeled sectarian or fundamentalist bromley and melton 2002 marty and appleby 1995 rather groups with militant objectives are increasingly leveraging the latent potential for violence within extremist religion krueger and maleckova 2003 and krueger 2007 have shown that contrary to popular hypotheses regarding the salience of poverty and education it is instead institutional conditions such as civil liberties that contribute to the origination of terrorists within a country religious extremism has been shown to be a potentially powerful input into the production of terrorism berman 2004 2 and the origination of terrorists has been empirically connected to civil liberties we seek to complete the triangle and connect religious extremism to social conditions in an extension of existing theory and test the predictions of the model in an empirical context with an eye toward civil liberties this paper extends previous models of religious clubs to better account for observed patterns of extremism across different settings and test policies most likely to reduce the appeal of extremism economists at first blush should have trouble explaining the survival of groups that demand large sacrifices from their members successful religious groups however routinely impose all sorts of apparently unproductive costs on their members iannaccone 1992 introduced a formal model of religious clubs within which apparently irrational sacrifice and stigma enhances the individual and collective utility his model demonstrated the feasibility of extremist groups but does less to explain the relative prevalence of extremism across time and place further the original model allows for only corner solutions and as such the viability of extreme groups is indistinguishable from the viability of the more moderate groups they must compete with for members in the religious marketplace in section ii we revisit analyze and extend the club model of religion we push the analysis of the original model exploring sacrifice substitutability of club and private goods and their relationships to member commitment and the viability of extremist groups in this preliminary analysis we illustrate not only the potential insights of the club theory of religion into the strength and viability of extremist groups but also the limitations inherent to the representative agent model we proceed by extending the model in a multi agent ma computational framework this framework permits us to analyze the distributions of agents and clubs that make up a religious economy the computational nature of the model is critical because it allows for sufficient heterogeneity of agents and clubs and given this heterogeneity agent decision making absent closed form solutions via nash equilibria extremists groups emerge as just one segment the high cost tail of a distribution of religious clubs that range across the full spectrum of potential group imposed sacrifice and stigma extremism is identifiable and comparable in the model because it exists within a full spectrum of clubs by varying the parameters of the model that control the distribution of secular wages across agents and the degree of substitutability between religious and secular commodities we can better explain where and when religious extremism is most popular its strength relative to more moderate groups and which economic policies reduce its prevalence

wages implicit contracts and the business cyle evidence from canadian micro data evidence of macroeconomic conditions impacting the earnings of men in canada in a manner consistent with an implicit contracting framework is found using data from eleven cross sectional surveys spanning the years 1981 1992 the estimates are similar to those found by beaudry and dinardo 1991 using u s data their analysis is extended to incestigate whether the effects of macroeconomic conditions differ by age evidence is found that the wages of young men and men near retirement are most sensitive to changes in the macroeconomic conditions over their job tenure this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

an accurate measurement of the crowd out effect income effect and price effect for charitable contributions in the past empirical research on charitable contributions has focused on two issues estimating the income and price elasticities of contributions and estimating the extent to which government funding crowded out private contributions the two fundamental problems in all these studies are the differences in the underlying conceptual models and the use of imperfect data for empirical analysis this paper addresses both of these problems

repeated shocks and preferences for redistribution abstract a society that believes wealth to be determined by random luck rather than by merit demands more redistribution we present evidence of this behavior by exploiting a natural experiment provided by the l aquila earthquake in 2009 which hit a large area of central italy through a series of destructive shakes over eight days matching detailed information on the ground acceleration registered during each shock with survey data about individual opinions on redistribution we show that the average intensity of the shakes is associated with subsequent stronger beliefs that for a society to be fair income inequalities should be leveled by redistribution the shocks however are not all alike we find that only the last three shakes occurred on the fourth and the eighth day of the earthquake have a statistically significant impact overall we find that the timing and repetition of the shocks play a role in informing redistributive preferences

church state separation and redistribution we analyze how religion affects voting and redistribution our model directs attention away from the particular faith belief or risk attitudes of religious individuals and emphasizes instead how organized religion opens the door to standard group based distributive politics we argue that organized religion makes it possible for the rich and the religious poor to form electoral coalitions in favor of low taxes and limited redistribution such electoral coalitions form out of simple material self interest and they occur at the expense of the secular poor however the material reward to the religious poor from supporting such electoral coalitions depends on the institutional context as state support for religion increases poor religious voters have greater incentives to vote with poor secular voters in favor of parties that support high taxes the analysis therefore highlights the possibilities of understanding how religion affects politics without asserting that religious individuals differ systematically from secular ones in their values or preferences

were japanese stock prices too high abstract this paper asks whether market fundamentals can explain the recent run up and decline of japanese equity values and price earnings ratios accounting differences explain about half of the long run disparity between u s and japanese p e s for example if japanese firms used u s accounting rules the japanese p e ratio would have been 32 6 not 53 7 in 1989 accounting differences cannot however explain the doubling of this ratio in 1986 nor its decline in 1990 similarly we are unable to isolate changes in required stock returns or growth expectations that are large enough to explain recent japanese stock price movements

dynamic income progressive taxes and the timing of charitable contributions using an econometric model of charitable giving and a 10 year panel of tax return data i find that previous studies have underestimated the effects of permanent income and overestimated the effects of permanent changes in tax prices the significant statutory tax changes that occurred during the 1980s especially in 1986 serve to identify the key model parameters my results imply that people smooth their giving when transitory income changes but also time their giving to exploit transitory changes in tax prices the results also raise questions about how effectively the tax incentives permanently influence the level rather than just the timing of charitable giving by individuals

voluntary donations and public expenditures in a federal system proponents of the new federalism argue that nonprofit organizations and local governments will fully offset federal social service expenditure cutbacks the author analyzes this proposition as a competitive game in which donations are motivated by private and public good considerations the author characterizes the response of political economic equilibrium to exogenous changes in federal expenditures when local voters are cognizant of donor reactions partial replacement is the most likely outcome though others are possible copyright 1987 by american economic association

government growth and private contributions to charity we exploit the time series properties of charitable giving to provide additional insights into the relationship between charitable contributions and government spending cointegration tests reveal a significant long run relationship between several categories of charitable giving and government spending granger causality tests provide evidence on the short run giving and spending relationship evidence suggests that charitable contributions to education respond quite differently to state and local government education expenditures versus federal government expenditures we argue that the government spending and charitable giving relationship depends on the source of government revenue how this revenue is used and the rational ignorance of private donors

religiosity and state welfare abstract the catholic sex abuse scandals reduced both membership and religiosity in the catholic church because government spending on welfare may substitute for the religious provision of social services we consider whether this plausibly exogenous decline in religiosity affected several measures of the public taste toward government and spending on welfare between 1990 and 2008 in places where there were more scandals individuals state a preference for less government provision of social services in contrast a higher level of abuse is also associated with an increase in voting for democratic candidates for president state legislatures and the us house of representatives and an increase in per capita government welfare spending although this increase is insufficient to replace the decrease in catholic provided charity

does it matter who your buyer is the role of nonprofit mission in the market for corporate control of hospitals abstract the hospital industry is one of this country s largest mixed industries with for profit nonprofit and government hospitals operating in the same local markets but how do ownership types differ previous studies have compared costs among different hospitals however these studies have not been entirely successful because costs cannot be meaningfully compared without controlling for hard to measure quality of service in this study we look to the market for corporate control or takeovers for evidence of ownership related differences we find that nonprofit and for profit firms pay different prices and that these differences relate to the nonprofit s mission specifically nonprofits and for profits pay the same price when buying for profits but nonprofits pay less when buying a like minded nonprofit so religious nonprofits pay less for other religious nonprofits for example the resulting dual price equilibrium suggests that nonprofits have a different objective than do for profits but

policy oriented voting in response to economic issues this study explores the hypothesis that voting in response to economic problems is policy oriented voters concerned about unemployment ore predicted to give greater support to democratic candidates while those concerned about inflation are predicted to vote more republican in light of evidence from previous research this study investigates the electoral effects of inflation and unemployment as 1 problems directly experienced by the individual and 2 problems deemed serious for the nation as a whole support is strongest for the unemployment side of the hypothesis voters personally affected by unemployment gave a modest boost to democratic candidates in virtually every election and in years of high unemployment the large percentage of voters who fell it was a serious national problem voted heavily democratic as well this study concludes by discussing the important implications these findings have for our understanding of how economic conditions influence voting behavior in american national elections

identifying the causal effect of income on religiosity using the earned income tax credit abstract how do economic conditions income and the generosity of social insurance affect religious behavior this paper provides novel evidence for the united states using variation in earned income tax credit benefits across states over time and by number of children in the raw data income and religiosity have a trivial relationship in contrast the instrumental variables strategy shows that increases in income from the eitc are found to sizably reduce religious attendance among low income individuals among individuals who attend the results indicate that an additional 1000 in annual income is associated with a decrease of roughly 1 service per year as compared to an average of 16 services per year the effect arises mainly along the intensive margin decreasing devout behavior and increasing more marginal attendance but having little impact on whether an individual participates at all or on beliefs there are also minimal effects on the occurrence and amount of contributions to religious organizations the results extend our understanding of the determinants of religiosity the relationship between governmental income support and religious behavior and the social effects of the earned income tax credit

economics religion and culture a brief introduction in this introduction we will avoid laboring over a definition of the economics of religion culture but this will not stop us from arguing that it is a burgeoning area of research work focusing on religious practice and related cultural issues dates back at least to adam smith but until the 1990s there had been little published by mainstream economists in this area recently however a variety of subfields in economics have taken up work here the jel classification code system includes a designation for papers on religion z12 and the american economic association via econlit keeps track of the number of journal articles published under this section of the code in fig 1 we show the number of papers published in this area in recent years as the picture shows there has been a sixfold increase in the total number of papers published in this area over the past decade including a number of truly excellent works some of the topics considered here include studies of how public policy affects attitudes and beliefs studies on the lasting economic implications of historic cultural institutions work on religious schooling versus secular schooling investigations of faith based social service provision work on violence and religious extremism analyses of religious donations and research on the connection between beliefs such as religious beliefs and behaviors

introduction to the economics of religion after a very long hiatus economists have begun again to study the relationship between economics and religion this article seeks to summarize and evaluate the principal themes and empirical findings that have appeared in some 200 recent papers on the economics of religion although some of the research concerns the economic consequences of religiosity most applies standard economic theory to the study of individual religious activity the characteristics of religious groups and the impact of regulation and competition on religious markets

partners in giving the crowding in effects of uk government grants abstract this study examines the determinants of voluntary donations to uk charities using empirical specifications that combine error component and simultaneous equations methods in a series of tests we identify the one way fixed effects endogenous representation for government grants as the best empirical model when this endogeneity is taken into account government grants cause significant crowding in for the full sample and the two largest cohorts price coefficients are negative and fund raising coefficients are positive religion charities are net revenue maximizers whereas other charity cohorts fund raise short of net revenue maximization

simultaneous determination of church contributions and church attendance in a standard model of household allocation of time and income church attendance and church contributions are determined simultaneously there are life cycle aspects to both attendance and contributions as azzi and ehrenberg 1975 and ehrenberg 1977 have argued and contributions behavior is affected by tax treatment and by a potential free rider problem as well this paper motivates an econometric specification which recognizes these features and estimates the parameters with a data set of over 2000 protestant church members

preaching matters replication and extension statistical evidence in a recent excellent paper by lipford mccormick and tollison shows a negative relationship between church membership and social misbehavior this paper replicates that relationship using more comprehensive data by u s county we provide theoretical support for the statistical evidence by showing that churches encourage appropriate behavior thus providing property rights enforcement because doing so benefits churches and their members aa church membership increases property rights enforcement increases although at a diminishing rate

the effect of implicit contracts on the movement of wages over the business cycle evidence from the national longitudinal surveys a 1991 study by paul beaudry and john dinardo found evidence of internal labor markets that augment incumbent workers wages when the external labor market is tight when unemployment is low and shield their wages when it is slack current wages they found depend on the tightest labor market conditions observed since a worker was hired not current labor market tightness or labor market tightness at the time of hiring this paper replicates and extends that research using data from six cohorts of the national longitudinal surveys that together span more than three decades as well as an estimation framework more robust than that in the original study the author finds strong support for beaudry and dinardo s key prediction supplementary regressions confirm other implications of the theory as well recently at least the effect of implicit contracting on wages has been similar for men and women

international demand and liquidity shocks in a svar model of the australian economy a structural vector autoregressive model of the australian economy that allows for international shocks from the usa japan as well as world commodity prices is specified and estimated for the period 1979 1999 a block exogenous structure linking the three countries is imposed the international linkages are modelled using a factor structure to circumvent problems from estimating large scale dynamic models the factors are estimated recursively using a kalman filter and are found to represent aggregate demand and liquidity shocks for the usa and japan respectively the key empirical result is the usa shocks are the dominant source of international shocks on the australian economy with the japanese economy having a dampening effect on the usa shocks the empirical results also show that australian monetary policy responds to domestic conditions rather than international monetary policy

voluntary donations and public expenditures in a federalist system comment and extension in a recent paper richard steinberg 1987 examines the effects upon private donations of federal and local government spending for a public good unfortunately when discussing the consequences of changes in local spending he mis specifies the demand function for donations this error enables one to conclude from his model that it is a priori impossible for government to crowd out private donations one for one such a conclusion violates intuition because one for one crowding out should be at least theoretically possible and steinberg s model when corrected does allow donations to fall as much as the government increases its spending as this comment will show one can further conclude from the model presented in the body of steinberg s paper that the structure of the government s tax policy has no effect on the level of crowding out however the corrected model implies that the government can influence changes in private donations that are caused by increased government spending the degree of control depends upon the size of the donors income effects and upon the ability of the government to allocate the extra tax burden