do formula or competitive grant funds have greater impacts on state agricultural productivity this article examines the impact of public agricultural research and extension on agricultural total factor productivity at the state level the objective is to establish whether federal formula or competitive grant funding of agricultural research has a greater impact on state agricultural productivity a pooled cross section time series model of agricultural productivity is fitted to annual data for forty eight contiguous states over 1970 1999 our results show that public agricultural research and agricultural extension have statistically significant positive impacts on state agricultural productivity in addition hatch formula funding has a larger impact on agricultural productivity than federal competitive grant funding and a reallocation of hatch formula funds to competitive grant funding would lower agricultural productivity this seems unlikely to be a socially optimal policy furthermore from a cost benefit perspective our study shows that the social marginal annualized real rate of return to public resources invested in agricultural research is 49 62 and to public agricultural extension the rate is even larger

does my contribution to your crowdfunding project matter abstract in this study we consider the dynamics of crowdfunding project support over time we propose that people support crowdfunding projects financially when they believe that their contribution will make an impact because perceptions of impact are positively related to goal proximity we predict that support for a crowdfunding project will increase as the project funding approaches its target goal in addition because motivation decreases after a goal is attained we further predict that crowdfunding contributions will significantly decrease after the target goal is reached we find strong support for these hypotheses from a large scale field study involving kickstarter furthermore we show that several factors related to the expected impact moderate the effects of goal proximity that is the positive effect of goal proximity on project support is accentuated if the project is nearing its funding deadline if the target goal is relatively small or if the project has limited early support

why farmers quit a county level analysis we identify the effects of alternative explanatory variables on the propensity of u s farmers to cease farming with a particular emphasis on understanding the roles of off farm employment and federal farm program payments conventional ordinary least squares analysis using all counties suggests that off farm employment has no statistical effect on the net number of farmers quitting between 1987 and 1997 ceteris paribus a more refined analysis which separates counties losing farmers from those that gained farmers reveals subtle and less clear cut effects of off farm employment and federal program payments on farm exits copyright 2001 oxford university press

the family and the state the immaturity of children sometimes precludes efficient arrangements between children and parents or others responsible for child care the difficulty in establishing efficient relations within families provides the point of departure for our interpretation of the heavy state involvement in the family the authors believe that a surprising number of state interventions mimic the agreements that would occur if children were capable of arranging for their care many regulations of the family improve the efficiency of family activities these interventions include subsidies to education and training social security and other old age support subsidies to births laws that limit access to divorce and the sale of children and laws that require parents permission for early marriage and other choices of children families that leave bequests can force children to repay parents for investments in human capital by reducing bequests therefore these families do not underinvest in childrens human capital by contrast families that do not leave bequests often poorer families do underinvest in children the state may subsidize schools and other training facilities to raise investments in children by poorer families to efficient levels authors modified

intergenerational transfers and liquidity constraints a growing body of evidence indicates that liquidity constraints could affect a substantial proportion of u s consumers but little is known about why these constraints might exist an important but little explored issue is the relationship between inter vivos intergenerational transfers and liquidity constraints these transfers can ease borrowing constraints empirical transfer patterns match those predicted from a model in which transfers are allocated to liquidity constrained consumers in particular the distinction between current and permanent incomes of potential recipients is a key aspect of private transfer behavior the findings have important implications for our understanding of consumer behavior

government policies and farm size does the size concept matter this paper employs a panel data set of 48 states from 1960 to 1996 to investigate the relationships of government policies public agricultural research and development r d extension and government commodity program payments to changes in farm size five different farm size measures are considered acres operated per farm real land and building value per farm real cash receipts per farm real cash receipts plus government payments per farm and an imputed measure of the real capital service flow per farm in order to make a more general statement about the impacts of government policies on farm size it was found that the impacts of government policies on farm size are in general robust to the measure of farm size considered more specifically it was found that r d extension and government payments all have positive effects on farm size

learning by doing and competition in the early rayon industry in this article i derive a structural econometric model of learning by doing from a dynamic oligopoly game unlike previous empirical models this model is capable of testing hypotheses concerning both the technological nature and strategic implications of learning i estimate the model with firm level data from the early u s rayon industry the empirical results show that there were considerable differences across firms in both proprietary and spillover learning the results also indicate that the two leading firms took their rival s reactions into account when choosing their strategies

social labeling by competing ngos a model with multiple issues and entry in many settings firms rely on nongovernmental organizations ngos to certify prosocial attributes embodied in their products we provide a model of competition between ngos in the provision of labeling services competition between a fixed number of ngos features a race to the top in labeling standards but entry of ngos offering new labels pushes standards down in a wide range of settings ngo entry and competition results in too many labels being adopted with each label being too stringent compared to a setting in which firms can credibly communicate the social attributes of their products labels demand greater prosocial behavior than is desired by firms although with proliferation of the number of labels this discrepancy disappears in contrast to existing models firms may engage in excessive corporate social responsibility when they rely on an ngo as a certifying intermediary this paper was accepted by bruno cassiman business strategy

supply and demand functions for multiproduct u s cash grain farms biases caused by research and other policies this study presents new estimates of supply and demand elasticities for u s multiproduct cash grain farms and estimates of input and output bias effects caused by public and private crop research extension and farmers schooling the study also shows that the social rate of return to public crop research is large about 62 percent

dynamic optimal control of process product innovation with learning by doing abstract in this paper we present a dynamic optimal control model of process product innovation with learning by doing and extend the model of chenavaz 2012 to an even more general model in which the firm s cost functions of product and process innovation depend on both the innovation investments and the knowledge accumulations of product and process innovation furthermore in our paper the product price the investments of product and process innovation are decision variables the product quality production cost the change rates of knowledge accumulations of product and process innovation are state variables the main objective of this paper is to analyze the relationships between these variables and investigate the model s optimal conditions and characteristics further we solve the model with some numerical examples and sensitivity analysis is conducted to study the effect of changing the parameters and coefficients on the objective function value

altruism within the family reconsidered do nice guys finish last this paper criticizes the view that altruism either increases the benefits of group interactions or improves the allocation of resources within families the authors identify a variety of circumstances in which members of a group would prefer to interact with less altruistic individuals and in which the efficiency of resource allocation is inversely related to the prevailing degree of altruism reasons that altruism might be a counter productive social force include 1 it can alter the social utility possibility frontier in surprising and sometimes unfortunate ways 2 it can entail exploitability causing family members to behave in ways that leave all parties worse off 3 altruists may take inefficient actions to preempt exploitation and 4 family members may establish efficient resource allocation by punishing selfish behavior a rise in the level of altruism may lead to the exclusion of certain punishment strategies on the grounds of credibility 1 general positive result is that sufficiently high levels of altruism almost always lead to efficient resource allocation one should not necessarily expect to find strong altruistic linkages between spouses nor should altruism necessarily contributed to marital stability in addition to the connections between this work and the literature on family behavior this analysis has broader implications concerning the role of altruism in society and the evolution of social conscience

intellectual property rights and the welfare effects of agricultural r d the profound changes that have affected agriculture in modern times are perhaps best illustrated by the evolution of production techniques due to mechanization new chemical inputs such as herbicides pesticides and fertilizers genetic selection of crops and animals new crop varieties and countless other technical and organizational improvements these innovations have allowed a generalized increase in physical output while at the same time agriculture has suffered a massive exodus of labor forces towards the non farm sectors indeed a stylized fact of developed countries post war growth is that productivity in agriculture has grown faster than in other sectors jorgenson and gollop 1992 this remarkable record naturally begs the question of what is at its root and a view that commands considerable consensus is that agricultural productivity growth is due to past investments in scientific research and development r d

one chance in a million altruism and the bone marrow registry stem cell transplants save lives of many patients with blood diseases donation is painful but rarely has lasting adverse effects patients can accept transplants only from donors with compatible immune systems those lacking a sibling match must seek donations from the general population the probability that two unrelated persons are compatible is less than 1 10 000 health authorities maintain a registry of several million genetically tested potential donors who agree to donate if asked we find that the benefits of adding registrants of every race exceed costs we also explore the peculiar structure of voluntary public good provision that faces potential donors jel d64 h41 i11 aq 1

productivity across industries and countries time series theory and evidence the authors examine whether convergence in aggregate productivity is also occurring at the industry level in fourteen oecd countries from 1970 to 1987 using both cross section and time series methods they find convergence in some sectors such as services however surprisingly the authors find that convergence does not hold for the manufacturing sector decomposing aggregate convergence into industry productivity gains and changing sectoral shares of output they find the service sector to be responsible for the bulk of cross country convergence to the united states the authors develop a new result on the asymptotic normality of panel unit root estimators to formally test within sector convergence copyright 1996 by mit press

a theory of impact philanthropy this article develops a new model of altruism called impact philanthropy an impact philanthropist is someone who wants to personally make a difference while that motive is straightforward its logical implications are significantly different from other models of philanthropy for example the contributions of other donors can reduce an impact philanthropist s charitable fulfillment as a result cooperation among impact philanthropists can reduce aggregate giving in addition impact philanthropy can lead to a codependent relationship between givers and receivers in which both benefit from the other finally the model suggests a conflict between charitable organizations and its donors concerning the allocation of charitable gifts in particular a charitable organization prefers to spread a donor s contribution across many goods whereas a donor prefers to target his or her contribution at a specific good d 2003 elsevier b v all rights reserved

tied transfers and paternalistic preferences why do parents make inter vivos transfers to their children and leave them postmortem bequests 1 gary becker s notions of altruism 1981 ch 8 by which he means that children s utilities are arguments of their parents utility function provides one explanation denoting the children s utility functions by u ci where ci denotes consumption by child i the preferences of parents with two children can be represented by a utility function of the form w cp u1 c1 u2 c2 where cp is the parents own consumption 2 in the altruistic model parents sole motive for intergenerational transfers is to increase their children s utility in other models however parents may have nonaltruistic as well as altruistic motives for transferring resources to their children the literature on economic development emphasizes old age support as a motive for fertility and to a lesser degree as a motive for providing children with human capital as part of an explicit or implicit intergenerational contract when human capital formation is the primary focus of the analysis as in discussions of education and earnings it is useful to decompose inter vivos transfers into human capital formation and other inter vivos transfers such a decomposition can mislead in discussing intergenerational transfers however because it obscures the fact that the provision of human capital by parents constitutes an intergenerational transfer laurence kotlikoff and avia spivak 1981 analyze another old age support model one in which the family operates as an incomplete annuities market in their model children make regular transfers to their aging parents and the share that each child contributes to the parents determines his or her share of the parental estate although the prospect of old age support may be an important motive for downstream intergenerational transfers i e from parents to children in some societies in the united states today upstream transfers appear too small and too uncertain to make this motive credible to explain downstream transfers in the united states today economists have investigated other models in which parents have selfish as well as selfless motives for example b douglas bernheim andrei shleifer and lawrence summers propose a model in which parents use the prospect of bequests to exact services from their children we envision a testator who though altruistic is also affected by actions taken individually by a number of potential beneficiaries he may e g enjoy receiving attention from his children 1985 p 1046 bernheim et al assume that such actions increase parents utility and decrease children s utilities in their model the children s utility functions become u1 ai ci where ai denotes services the ith child provides the parents and the parents utility function becomes w cp al a2 ul al c1 u2 a2 ca to measure these services bernheim et al use frequency of contact i e visits plus telephone calls between parents and children this approach expands the concept of child services to include those provided by adult children who live outside the parents household in an attempt to explain bequests and inter vivos transfers child services originally appeared in discussions of fertility and the allocation of resources to young children living with their parents and thus tends to evoke the joys of young parenthood university of pennsylvania philadelphia pa 19104 and university of washington i am grateful to the national science foundation and the national institutes of health for financial support to gary becker samuel preston david stapleton and paul taubman for helpful comments and to judith farnbach for editonal assistance 1 even if bequests are unplanned as some versions of the life cycle savings model assume inter vivos transfers must be intentional 21 ignore the possible dependence of the children s utility on their own children s utility etc because it is not relevant to the issues discussed in this paper

patents learning by doing and market structure in the chemical processing industries for a sample of 24 chemical products count data models are used to evaluate firms propensity to patent and the link between patented process innovations and output prices the results show that process patenting was largely an outgrowth of learning by doing propensity to patent increased with firm size but decreased with market concentration reductions in output prices were strongly linked to learning by doing and more weakly to the rate of patenting producer firms appear to have been more successful than non producers in appropriating the value of patented process innovations

efficiency effects of agricultural economics research in the united states allocations of research funds across programs are often made for efficiency reasons social science research is shown to have small lagged but significant effects on u s agricultural efficiency when public agricultural r d and extension are simultaneously taken into account farm management and marketing research variables are used to explain variations in estimates of allocative and technical efficiency using a bayesian approach that incorporates stylized facts concerning lagged research impacts in a way that is less restrictive than popular polynomial distributed lags results are reported in terms of means and standard deviations of estimated probability distributions of parameters and long run total multipliers extension is estimated to have a greater impact on both allocative and technical efficiency than either r d or social science research

productivity growth in indian agriculture is there evidence of convergence across states this paper explores the question of convergence in total factor productivity tfp in agriculture across fourteen major agricultural states of india using a tornqvist theil index for tfp growth for the period 1973 1993 we find no evidence to support convergence to a single tfp level convergence after grouping the various states on the basis of their productivity performance we find that the high performing states show a gradual movement towards the trend whereas the low performing states generally show more volatility testing for long run convergence in levels of agricultural productivity we find evidence of conditional beta convergence after controlling for state specific factors and idiosyncratic year specific volatility the results are robust to alternative specifications of tests of unit root in panel data developed recently

agricultural research expenditures in the united states a public goods perspective this paper presents econometric evidence on two different public good formulations of agricultural research pure public and joint product models a nested test for simultaneous equations is proposed and applied for distinguishing between the two models the procedure is used for testing for neutrality using data from 1951 85 the authors illustrate the technique with two stage least squares estimates for forty eight u s states an overwhelming number of sample states abide by the joint product model price and full income elasticities are presented copyright 1994 by mit press

targeting transfers through restrictions on recipients our objective is to design transfer programs that maximize some social welfare function following the optimal income tax formulation we assume that a random process endows individuals with characteristics that influence welfare such as ability to earn income medical condition or unmonitorable income the goal is to maximize the utility of a randomly chosen individual other individualistic social welfare functions would lead to equivalent results if the random characteristics were observable a first best outcome could be achieved by making them the basis for lump sum transfers in practice however we can observe only indicators of these characteristics such as earnings medical expenditures or consumption patterns the challenge for policy is to design an efficient second best transfer program based on indicators in this paper we argue that 1 an optimal transfer program in general must sacrifice productive efficiency to target efficiency this is done by imposing restrictions on the choices made by intended beneficiaries 2 a program that incorporates restrictions such as means tested in kind transfers commodity specific taxes and subsidies and even ordeals i e the imposition of deadweight costs to qualify for a transfer will perform better than programs that rely solely on income taxes and cash transfers

media coverage and charitable giving after the 2004 tsunami author affiliation philip h brown department of economics colby college 5246 mayflower hill waterville me 04901 usa e mail phbrown colby edu corresponding author jessica h minty analysis group inc 111 huntington avenue 10th floor boston ma 02199 usa e mail jminty analysisgroup com acknowledgment we are grateful to claudio agostini michael donihue martin farnham rebecca graninger daniel hamermesh melanie siben tom tietenberg andreas waldkirch seminar participants at colby college and two anonymous referees for numerous helpful comments and suggestions we would also like to acknowledge reuters alertnet and chuck lakin for their assistance in identifying data sources and care usa catholic relief services mercy corps surfaid international and four other relief agencies for providing data for the purpose of this research finally philip h brown would like to thank the international food policy research institute for sabbatical support during the preparation of this manuscript 1 introductionrelief workers have long believed in the causal relationship between media coverage of humanitarian crises and charitable giving to relief agencies for example private donations to relief agencies during the early stages of the 1994 rwandan genocide were sufficient to support approximately one million displaced rwandans but after the tribulations of o j simpson and tanya harding eclipsed rwanda in the media funding for relief activities began to decline the perception among many aid workers in the camps for rwandan refugees including one of the authors was that the media had turned its back on the crisis with potentially dire consequences 1while anecdotal evidence abounds few studies have systematically assessed the relationship between media coverage and the behavior of private donors and those that do suffer from important analytical shortcomings for example an analysis undertaken by the institute for philanthropy finds that 14 of 15 surveyed british philanthropists believe that the media has the power to encourage private giving with 11 of the 15 being inspired to make charitable donations themselves breeze 2005 similarly olsen carstenson and hoyen 2003 find a high correlation between the total number of relevant articles in western newspapers and the total amount of humanitarian assistance allocated to victims of the flooding in mozambique in 2000 and the cyclone in eastern india in 1999 unfortunately neither sample is large enough to make generalizations nor is there any attempt to quantify the magnitude of the causal relationship in part the difficulty in quantifying the relationship stems from disentangling the effect of new developments in stories covered in the media from the pure effect of media coverage returning to the rwanda case the former is tantamount to asking what is the combined effect of 10 000 additional deaths and a five minute news story on donations to u s charities while the latter is equivalent to asking given that 10 000 people were killed what is the effect of increasing the news story from five minutes to six in this paper we use the december 26 2004 tsunami as a case study to quantify the causal effect of media coverage on donations to charity specifically we consider the effects of reporting on three nightly network news broadcasts and articles in two prominent newspapers on private donations to seven u s relief agencies to eliminate the time lag between when news reports are seen or read and when donations are received by relief agencies we focus exclusively on donations made via the internet we also control for donor fatigue tax incentives and weekends to better isolate the effect of media coverage finally to alleviate simultaneity concerns and omitted variable bias including new developments in the tsunami story itself we use announcements of casualties among u

the two dimensions of policy impacts on economic cohesion concept and illustration for the cap abstract given the growing importance of cohesion policy within the european union eu during the last two decades public and scientific interest in the role of eu policies for regional disparities has risen continuously recent empirical studies on the impacts of the common agricultural policy cap on economic cohesion have been strikingly diverse in their principal findings whereas some studies suggest positive overall effects on economic cohesion others stress exactly the opposite one major reason for the ambiguous results is that a single agreed upon measure of economic cohesion is lacking we propose a concept that distinguishes between two dimensions of policy impacts on economic cohesion i the redistributive impact at a defined period of time and ii the change of the redistributive impact over time the first dimension addresses the question whether a policy makes the distribution of a target variable e g income more equal or unequal at one point of time the second dimension covers the impact of the policy on the disparity of the same variable over time i e the impact on convergence an empirical illustration of the concept for 13 nuts 1 regions in germany over the period 1991 2009 reveals that the two policy impacts of the cap are partly contradictory for the two dimensions it is shown that the cap fosters economic cohesion by reducing regional disparities in each individual year with regard to redistributive impacts over time we find that cap transfers leave income convergence largely unaffected for society as a whole within the agricultural sector it leads to a convergence of receipts per farm whereas it induces a divergence of farm receipts per hectare

the intergenerational transmission of generosity abstract this paper estimates the correlation between the generosity of parents and the generosity of their adult children using regression models of adult children s charitable giving new charitable giving data are collected in the panel study of income dynamics and used to estimate the regression models the regression models are estimated using a wide variety of techniques and specification tests and the strength of the intergenerational giving correlations is compared with intergenerational correlations in income wealth and consumption expenditure from the same sample using the same set of controls we find the religious giving of parents and children to be strongly correlated as strongly correlated as are their income and wealth the correlation in the secular giving e g giving to the united way educational institutions for poverty relief of parents and children is smaller similar in magnitude to the intergenerational correlation in consumption parents religious giving is positively associated with children s secular giving but in a more limited sense overall the results are consistent with generosity emerging at least in part from the influence of parental charitable behavior in contrast to intergenerational models in which parental generosity towards their children can undo government transfer policy ricardian equivalence these results suggest that parental generosity towards charitable organizations might reinforce government policies such as tax incentives aimed at encouraging voluntary transfers

capital services in u s agriculture concepts comparisons and the treatment of interest rates this paper begins with a review of the methods and assumptions used to measure capital service flows two data series on capital inputs in u s agriculture are briefly described and compared we show that measures of capital services are sensitive to the treatment of interest rates notably the use of fixed versus variable market rates significantly affects measures of the quantity and productivity of agricultural capital in the united states we conclude that when calculating capital usage in u s agriculture the use of a fixed interest rate generates more plausible estimates than the use of an annual market rate

learning by doing in a t period production planning analytical solution abstract the firms in many industries shift down the production cost function as they accumulate experience learning by doing the intertemporal production decision of the firm under learning by doing can be formulated as a dynamic optimization problem though properties of the solution to that problem are known in general this analytical solution has not been presented in the literature in this paper we present the analytical solution for a class of discrete time t period learning by doing problems this allows us to gain insight into practical aspects such as determining when current losses are expected to occur or when the firm will become fully efficient examples are provided

an experimental test of warm glow giving abstract this paper reports the results of an experimental test of the warm glow hypothesis a participant is presented with the opportunity to contribute from her own endowment to a charity of choice the experiment is designed so that a pure altruist has no incentive to donate the amount the designated charity will receive is preset any contribution by the participant crowds out dollar for dollar giving by the proctor we find that participants on average donated 20 of their endowments and that approximately 57 of the participants made a donation

spatial disparities in the european agriculture a regional analysis this article examines the territorial imbalances in european agriculture during the period 1980 to 2001 by means of the information provided by various methodological instruments which allow us to overcome the drawbacks of conventional convergence analysis the results obtained reveal that the regional distribution of productivity in the agricultural sector is characterized by the presence of positive spatial dependence this fact implies that the european regions in close spatial proximity register similar levels of the variable under study which highlights the relevance of geographical location in this context the empirical evidence presented also shows that regional disparities have remained almost constant during the time interval considered however the increase in density around the european average explains the observed reduction in the degree of bipolarization while intra distribution mobility is relatively limited finally the analysis carried out allows us to assess the role of variables s

the learning curve and pricing in the chemical processing industries data on 37 chemical products are used to test a number of hypotheses about the learning curve and industrial price behavior the results document a strong and consistent learning effect learning is found to be a function of cumulated industry output and cumulated investment rather than calendar time standard economies of scale appear significant but small in magnitude relative to the learning effect variations in the slope of the learning curve are linked to differences in r d expenditures and capital intensity market concentration is found to be a strong influence on price flexibility and the timing of learningrelated price changes

motives for private income transfers private income transfers are becoming increasingly recognized as a key aspect of the u s economy the majority of private income transfers occur inter vivos i e between living persons but very little is known about this type of transfer behavior this paper tests alternative hypotheses concerning motivation for inter vivos transfers two motives are considered altruism and exchange evidence presented here casts doubt on the altruistic model of transfer behavior observed patterns for inter vivos transfers are more consistent with exchange related motives this finding has important implications for the effects of public transfer programs on the distribution of economic well being

rent extraction and prosocial behavior abstract we present controlled experimental evidence on how rent extraction by an administrator affects giving to non profit associations holding the price of giving constant we compare contributions between two conditions a rent extraction condition in which an administrator can expropriate a part of the contributions and a control condition without rent extraction we find that rent extraction strongly reduces average contributions studying the channels through which this effect operates we demonstrate that rent extraction has situational spillovers suggesting that it undermines the contributors general preference for giving in contrast we do not find evidence for negative reciprocity towards the administrator

more information is not always better the case of voluntary provision of environmental quality this paper adds to the literature on the voluntary provision of public goods by showing that the warm glow that individuals gain depends on the perceived relative effectiveness of contributions we use a new survey on pro environment behaviors attitudes and knowledge and find that individuals act in accordance with their beliefs regardless of whether or not these beliefs are accurate and engage more frequently in activities that have a higher perceived impact on environmental quality we find that low provision of the public good is greater among people who believe they cannot do much for the environment and do not consider themselves environmentalists

a note on subsidizing gifts abstract altruistically motivated gifts involve a species of consumption externality donors obtain an altruistic benefit from the effect of their gifts on donees utility but do not take into account that the benefit to donees is itself relevant to social welfare the level of gift giving thus will be lower than is optimal a subsidy can correct this problem while compulsory transfers assuming the state lacks information about who is altruistic and bargaining between donors and donees cannot the rationale for subsidizing gifts offered here does not depend on whether the donee s activity is a public good as with gifts for medical research or whether the transfer tends to equalize the wealth of donors and donees factors emphasized in the exisitng literature on the subject

charitable motives and bidding in charity auctions research on bidding in auctions has generally relied on the assumption of self interested bidders this work relaxes that assumption in the context of charity auctions because understanding charitable motives has important implications for auction design and charities fundraising strategies this study investigates bidders specific types of charitable motives and the strength of these motives we carry out three controlled field experiments consisting of real life auctions conducted on a local internet auction site we use a novel design in which we simultaneously run charity and noncharity auctions for identical products and vary the percentage donated to charity results show that auctions with proceeds donated to charity lead to significantly higher selling prices a result due to a higher bidding by bidders with charitable motives rather than to increased bidder entry we also find that increased prices only occur when the charitable donation is a percentage of the auction revenue and that a fixed charitable donation associated with each auction has no effect on prices furthermore we find that prices are increasing in the percentage donated to charity we find considerable support for a model of voluntary shill like bidding where charitable bidders try to increase proceeds in charity auctions we also find that auctions with 25 of revenue donated to charity had higher net revenue than noncharity auctions hence companies may be able to use charity auctions as part of a corporate social responsibility strategy and at the same time increase profitability even though they donate part of the proceeds to charity

social security as trade among living generations we model u s social security that is legislated endogeneously by living generations specifically we consider the effects of social security on resource allocation and pareto optimality examining which generations gain from social security and whether some generations lose because saving and transfer decisions are made sequentially in the real world we use an infinite horizon overlapping generations framework in which life cycle saving and transfers to the old are determined by living agents we focus on the case in which agents are altruistic but place sufficiently greater weight on own comsumption than on the consumption of agents in other generations so that starting from a steady state without social security living agents would gain utility if consumption were shifted marginally to them from later generations excerpt

convergence in u s productivity growth for agriculture implications of interstate research spillovers for funding agricultural research state crop livestock and aggregate agricultural total factor productivity tfp data 1950 82 are examined for evidence of convergence to a single tfp level convergence or to a steady state rate of growth or conditional convergence our empirical results do not support convergence but do support convergence the rate of convergence is variable and depends on research and development r d spillins from other states private r d and farmers schooling the finding of strong positive interstate spillover effects implies that independent state planning of agricultural research is inefficient and cooperation across states boundaries including establishment of new political jurisdictions for financing public agricultural research can enhance efficiency

the impact of public scrutiny on corporate philanthropy this paper proposes that a corporation s vulnerability to public scrutiny drives its corporate giving the hypothesis that companies donate for strategic motives is tested against the alternative that they do so for altruistic reasons court cases and news articles were selected as proxies for public scrutiny macroeconomic variables were used to gauge the level of public charitable need and test for altruism through examining the philanthropic behavior of 40 fortune 500 companies over 7 years this paper finds that companies are strategic and altruistic in their giving

ex ante commitments to give if you win exceed donations after a win abstract should fundraisers ask a banker to donate if he earns a bonus or wait and ask after the bonus is known standard eu theory predicts that these approaches are equivalent loss aversion and signaling models predict a larger commitment before the bonus is known theories of affect predict the reverse in five experiments incorporating lab and field elements n 1363 we solicited charitable donations from small lottery winnings varying the conditionality of donations between participants pooling across experiments participants are 23 more likely to commit to donate from the winning income and commit 25 more when asked before the lottery s outcome is determined relative to those asked to donate after they learn they have won these differences are strongly statistically significant this represents the first evidence on how pro social behavior extends to conditional commitments over uncertain income with implications for charitable fundraising giving pledges and experimental methodology

cost minimizing welfare programs abstract we study opportunities for lowering the cost of welfare programs by exploiting heterogeneity in the unobservable tastes of welfare recipients relying on the inability of cash based programs to achieve self selection we provide circumstances in which it is optimal to provide payments in kind our model differs from other self selection models because we allow the recipients the opportunity to trade the subsequent to the receipt of their welfare packages the presence of unreported cash among the recipient population is considered

pareto optimal redistribution and private charity abstract when private charity exists and is motivated by utility interdependence a non pareto optimal outcome the free rider problem typically arises nevertheless incremental fiscal redistribution cannot achieve a paretian welfare improvement so long as private charity continues at positive levels donors respond to incremental fiscal redistribution by reducing their voluntary contributions by exactly a dollar for every dollar transferred in this way no net transfer is achieved unless incremental fiscal redistribution is pursued to the point where private contributions have been driven to zero alternatively a net transfer may be achieved by fiscal measures which affect donors marginal incentives to donate

giving overseas and public policy remarkable numbers of people give to overseas development charities the aim of this paper is to consider how such overseas giving is best modelled and the implications for public policy widely used theories of charitable giving based on warm glow or the provision of public goods provide insight but are not fully satisfactory as explanations of giving for the specific purpose of development instead an identification approach to individual giving is proposed here that combines the results focus of the public goods formulation with the scale of the warm glow model the theoretical model is used to examine the implications for public policy including the extent to which official aid crowds out private giving and how public policy should take account of private willingness to make charitable transfers overseas