gender wage gap across the wage distribution in different segments of the indian labour market 1983 2012 exploring the glass ceiling or sticky floor phenomenon abstractwomen s participation in the indian labour market is not only low but they are also engaged in low productivity and low paying jobs further the labour market is segmented by gender type of employment sector and location of residence this study makes an important contribution by examining gender wage gap in india across different segments of the labour market over the wage distribution using national level representative data spanning the period 1983 to 2012 the empirical results suggest that i the male female raw wage gap has declined over time across the wage distribution ii the gender wage gap attributable to differing returns to characteristics has increased over time and there is evidence of convergence of productive characteristics of men and women iii sticky floor rather than glass ceiling phenomenon is observed in all segments of the labour market and iv the adjusted wage gap suggests that women at the bottom of the distribution face higher discrimination than those at the t

is there a glass ceiling in sweden using 1998 data we show that the gender log wage gap in sweden increases throughout the wage distribution and accelerates in the upper tail we interpret this as a strong glass ceiling effect we use quantile regression decompositions to examine whether this pattern can be ascribed primarily to gender differences in labor market characteristics or in the rewards to those characteristics even after extensive controls for gender differences in age education both level and field sector industry and occupation we find that the glass ceiling effect we see in the raw data persists to a considerable extent

ngos in bangladesh activities resources and governance summary this paper reports results from one of the first large nationally representative surveys of non governmental organizations ngos in a developing country the ngo sector in bangladesh is highly organized and relatively homogeneous most ngos utilize a branch and headquarters structure in which branches have limited autonomy from headquarters at the branch level most ngos in the country whether big or small focus on credit services derive more of their income from fees for services than from grants rely on salaried rather than voluntary staff keep detailed financial accounts that are externally audited and hire middle class college educated men as managers the convergence to a modal institutional form probably is the result of the persuasive power of ideas sociological pressures toward acculturation and conformity as well as material incentives

watchdogs of the invisible hand ngo monitoring and industry equilibrium globalization has been accompanied by rising pressure from advocacy non governmental organizations ngos on multinational firms to act in socially responsible manner we analyze how ngo pressure interacts with industry structure using a simple model of ngo firm interaction embedded in an industry environment with endogenous markups and entry we explain three key empirical patterns in developing country industries under activist pressure the degree of exit under more intense activist pressure the differential response of industries to ngo activism and the general rise of ngo activism following globalization

the use of quantile regressions in estimating gender wage differentials a case study of the philippines quantile regressions are used to analyse the size components and nature of the gender earnings differentials as well as the returns to education by gender in the philippines over the entire conditional distribution of earnings using data from the 1999 apis survey this approach allows more focused conclusions about the nature of gender earnings differentials incorporating the quantile regression approach to the oaxaca blinder decomposition allows the localization of gender discrimination to particular quantiles of the earnings distribution and permits more targeted policy intervention

revealed objective functions of microfinance institutions evidence from bangladesh abstract this paper discerns between two alternative objective functions for not for profit microfinance institutions mfis profit maximization and poverty targeting i use the strategic branch location choices of the two largest mfis in a mature concentrated market to reveal their objectives i consider location decisions to be the pure strategy nash equilibrium outcome of a one shot game where the mfis simultaneously choose markets in which to locate as well as how many branches to open in each applying the duality principle i nest fully a pure profit maximization objective within a poverty targeting motive i test the model using comprehensive data from bangladesh in 2003 structurally estimating profit and impact functions my msm estimates suggest that pure profit maximization cannot explain the branch placement pattern for grameen bank or brac they both deviate towards poverty alleviation targeting one higher standard deviation of poverty headcount costs grameen 35 2 of its potential profits and brac 51 4

the microfinance promise in the past decade microfinance programs have demonstrated that it is possible to lend to low income households while maintaining high repayment rates even without requiring collateral the programs promise a revolution in approaches to alleviating poverty and spreading financial services and millions of poor households are served globally a growing body of economic theory demonstrates how new contractual forms offer a key to microfinance success particularly the use of group lending contracts with joint liability for the most part however high repayment rates have not translated into profits and studies of impacts on poverty yield a mixed picture in describing emerging tensions the paper highlights the diversity of innovative mechanisms beyond group lending contracts the measurement of financial sustainability the estimation of economic and social impacts the costs and benefits of subsidization and the potential to reduce poverty through savings programs rather than just credit the promise of microfinance has pushed far ahead of the evidence and an agenda is put forward for addressing critical empirical gaps and sharpening the terms of policy discussion

strategic information disclosure the case of multi attribute products with heterogeneous consumers we examine the incentives for firms to voluntarily disclose otherwise private information about quality attributes of differentiated products in particular we focus on the case of differentiated products with multiple attributes and consumers that are heterogeneous in their preferences over these attributes we show that there exist certain configurations of consumer preferences under which a firm producing a high quality product even with zero costs of disclosure may choose not to reveal the quality of its product this failure of firms to voluntarily disclose the quality of their products will arise when providing consumers with more information results in more elastic demands for these products which in turn triggers more intensive price competition and leads to lower prices and profits for all firms as a result the equilibrium in which disclosure is voluntary may diverge from that in which disclosure is mandatory

product variety informative advertising and price competition abstract in many product categories consumer tastes are diverse and firms use finely targeted advertising to inform consumers about their products this article proposes a model of informative advertising that allows for diverse consumer tastes and multiple competing firms using this framework the authors analyze how diversity in consumers tastes informative advertising and improvements in advertising technology may influence prices first informative advertising can lead to lower prices if consumer valuations are high however if consumer valuations are low informative advertising can lead to higher prices second when consumer valuations are high price increases with greater diversity in tastes though this result reverses if consumer valuations are low third improvements in advertising technology lead to higher levels of advertising when consumer valuation is high but the opposite effect can occur when consumer valuation is low the authors relate these theoretical findings to previous e

counterfactual decomposition of changes in wage distributions using quantile regression we propose a method to decompose the changes in the wage distribution over a period of time in several factors contributing to those changes the method is based on the estimation of marginal wage distributions consistent with a conditional distribution estimated by quantile regression as well as with any hypothesized distribution for the covariates comparing the marginal distributions implied by different distributions for the covariates one is then able to perform counterfactual exercises the proposed methodology enables the identification of the sources of the increased wage inequality observed in most countries specifically it decomposes the changes in the wage distribution over a period of time into several factors contributing to those changes namely by discriminating between changes in the characteristics of the working population and changes in the returns to these characteristics we apply this methodology to portuguese data for the period 1986 1995 and find that the observed increase in educational levels contributed decisively towards greater wage inequality copyright 2005 john wiley sons ltd

is there a glass ceiling over europe exploring the gender pay gap across the wages distribution using harmonised data from the european union household panel we analyse gender pay gaps by sector across the wages distribution for ten countries we find that the mean gender pay gap in the raw data typically hides large variations in the gap across the wages distribution we use quantile regression qr techniques to control for the effects of individual and job characteristics at different points of the distribution and calculate the part of the gap attributable to differing returns between men and women we find that first gender pay gaps are typically bigger at the top of the wage distribution a finding that is consistent with the existence of glass ceilings for some countries gender pay gaps are also bigger at the bottom of the wage distribution a finding that is consistent with sticky floors third the gender pay gap is typically higher at the top than the bottom end of the wage distribution suggesting that glass ceilings are more prevalent than sticky floors and that these prevail in the majority of our countries fourth the gender pay gap differs significantly across the public and the private sector wages distribution for each of our eu countries

minimum wages and the gender wage gap estimates are made of the effect of minimum wages on the size and composition of the gender wage gap in canada in 1986 it is found that minimum wages close the wage gap substantially for young workers and less so for adults the reduction in the gap is most attributable to the adverse employment effects of minimum wages the results also indicate that most of the reduction in the gap is realized through a fall in the discriminatory component

the governance of non governmental organizations in uganda summary using original survey data we document the activities resources and governance structure of ngos operating in uganda the ngo sector is funded primarily by international non governmental organizations and bilateral donors we find large differences in size and funding across ngos with only a few ngos attracting most of the funding most ngos are small and underfunded and focus on raising awareness and advocacy few ngos are faith based most screening and monitoring is done by grant agencies some monitoring is also done internally by members and trustees little monitoring is done by government ngos do not file income tax returns and few respondents are able to provide coherent financial accounts

remedying education evidence from two randomized experiments in india this paper presents the results of a two year randomized evaluation of a large scale remedial education program conducted in mumbai and vadodara india the remedial education program hires young women from the community to teach basic literacy and numeracy skills to children who reach standard three or four without having mastered these competencies the program implemented by a ngo in collaboration with the government is extremely cheap it cost 5 dollars per child per year and is easily replicable it has been implemented in 20 indian cities and reached tens of thousands of children we find the program to be very effective on average it increased learning by 0 15 standard deviations in the first year and 0 25 in the second year the gains are the largest for children at the bottom of the distribution children in the bottom third gain 0 2 standard deviations in the first year and 0 32 in the second year in math they gain 0 51 standard deviation in the second year the results are similar in the two grade levels and in the two cities at the margin extending this program would be up to 12 16 times more cost effective than hiring new teachers authors

corrupt governments do not receive more state to state aid governance and the delivery of foreign aid through non state actors abstract a core result of the aid allocation literature is that the quality of governance in recipient countries does not affect the amounts of foreign aid received donor countries may still give aid to poorly governed countries because of a dilemma they face those countries most in need typically also lack proper institutions this paper argues that donors try to resolve this dilemma by delivering aid through non state actors using aid shares as well as absolute amounts of aid allocated through state and non state channels and considering different dimensions of governance we provide evidence that bypassing governments via ngos and multilateral organizations is indeed a response to weak recipient state institutions the effect is stronger in aid sectors where donors can more easily switch between channels and weaker for higher levels of economic self interest among donors

randomized evaluations of educational programs in developing countries some lessons this paper reviews recent randomized evaluations of educational programs in developing countries including programs to increase school participation to provide educational inputs and to reform education it then extracts some lessons for education policy and for the practice and political economy of randomized evaluations

glass ceiling and double disadvantage effects women in the us labour market gender pay issues in the us labour market are examined using 1990 and 2000 us census data for three groups the native born immigrants from english speaking countries and immigrants from non english speaking countries quantile regression estimates reveal different patterns of wage effects across the wage distribution females have lower rates of pay across the entire wage scale there is minimal evidence of glass ceiling effects immigrant women from non english speaking countries are argued to experience a double disadvantage effect

informative advertising with differentiated products in this paper we study the role of promotional expenditures by sellers in a model of product differentiation advertising conveys full and accurate information about the characteristics of products heterogeneous consumers who have no source of information other than advertisements seek to purchase the products that best fit their needs despite the roles played by advertising in improving the matching of products and consumers and in increasing the elasticity of demand faced by each firm we find that the market determined levels of advertising are excessive given the extent of diversity in the market we derive a promotional equilibrium based on a specific information transmission technology paying explicit attention to the structure of consumer information and its impact on firms demand curves this allows us to study the effects of changes in the advertising technology including an increased ability to target messages to specific groups of consumers on the equilibrium in the product market we find that decreased advertising costs may reduce profits by increasing the severity of price competition

order in product customization decisions evidence from field experiments differentiated product models are predicated on the belief that a product s utility can be derived from the summation of utilities for its individual attributes in one framed field experiment and two natural field experiments we test this assumption by experimentally manipulating the order of attribute presentation in the product customization process of custom made suits and automobiles we find that order affects the design of a suit that people configure and the design and price of a car that people purchase by influencing the likelihood that they will accept the default option suggested by the firm

salience and consumer choice we present a theory of context dependent choice in which a consumer s attention is drawn to salient attributes of goods such as quality or price an attribute is salient for a good when it stands out among the good s attributes relative to that attribute s average level in the choice set or more broadly the choice context consumers attach disproportionately high weight to salient attributes and their choices are tilted toward goods with higher quality price ratios the model accounts for a variety of disparate evidence including decoy effects and context dependent willingness to pay it also suggests a novel theory of misleading sales

not for profit entrepreneurs abstract entrepreneurs who start new firms may choose not for profit status as a means of committing to soft incentives such incentives protect donors volunteers consumers and employees from ex post expropriation of profits by the entrepreneur we derive conditions under which completely self interested entrepreneurs opt for not for profit status despite the fact that this status limits their ability to enjoy the profits of their enterprises we also show that even in the absence of tax advantages unrestricted donations would flow to non profits rather than for profit firms because donations have more significant influence on the decisions of the non profits

the advertising mix for a search good we extend the persuasion game to bring it squarely into the economics of advertising we model advertising as exciting consumer interest into learning more about the product and determine a firm s equilibrium choice of advertising content over quality information price information and horizontal match information equilibrium is unique whenever advertising is necessary the outcome is a separating equilibrium with quality unravelling lower quality firms need to provide more information for a given quality level as a function of consumer visit costs first quality information is disclosed then price information and then horizontal product information are added to the advertising mix some suggestive evidence is provided from airline ads in newspapers this paper was accepted by j miguel villas boas marketing

aid allocation by german ngos does the degree of official financing matter using a new data set for 41 german non governmental organisations ngos we analyse the allocation of ngo aid across recipient countries in a tobit regression framework by identifying for each ngo the degree of official financing we address the largely unresolved issue of whether financial dependence on the government impairs the targeting of ngo aid it turns out that german ngos are more active in poorer countries while they do not complement official aid by working under difficult local conditions beyond a certain threshold rising financial dependence weakens their poverty orientation and provides an incentive to engage in easier environments in addition we find that the ngos follow the state as well as ngo peers when allocating aid this herding behaviour is however hardly affected by the degree of official financing

when ngos go global competition on international markets for development donations why are many large non governmental organizations ngos becoming multinational entities what are the welfare implications of this integration of markets for development donations to answer these questions we build a simple two country model with horizontally differentiated ngos competing in fundraising we find that ngos become multinational if the economies of scale in fundraising are sufficiently large in that case national ngos in the smaller country disappear while some national ngos remain in the larger country only if country sizes are sufficiently different social welfare is higher in the regime with multinationals than under autarky

male female earnings differentials and the role of language in canada ontario and quebec 1970 recent studies by robb 1978 and gunderson 1979a have analysed malefemale earnings differentials in ontario and canada respectively both authors first estimated sex specific earnings functions and then employed the estimated coefficients to decompose the observed or gross earnings differential into a portion attributable to differences in mean characteristics or endowments and a portion attributable to discrimination i discrimination is measured both by differential returns to the same productivity generating characteristics the estimated coefficients of the characteristics and by other forms of discrimination which do not appear explicitly in the earnings equation the estimated intercepts the purpose of this note is to report the results obtained from performing a similar decomposition analysis for quebec and to compare our results with those of robb and gunderson given the comparative nature of our study we have chosen to use the same data base sample characteristics model specifications and control variables as did robb and gunderson 2 the major difference between our study and those of robb and gunderson is the treatment of language robb did not include language variables in her earnings functions for ontario while gunderson employed what we term a narrow definition of language for canada in his earnings equations gunderson measured language skills by the ability to communicate in canada s official

will affirmative action policies eliminate negative stereotypes a key question concerning affirmative action is whether the labor market gains it brings to minorities can continue without it becoming a permanent fixture in the labor market the authors argue that this depends on how the policy affects employers beliefs about the productivity of minority workers they study the joint determination of employer beliefs and worker productivity in a model of statistical discrimination in job assignments the authors prove that even when identifiable groups are equally endowed ex ante affirmative action can bring about a situation in which employers correctly perceive the groups to be unequally productive ex post copyright 1993 by american economic association

on the welfare effects and political economy of competition enhancing policies we analyse the welfare effects of policies that intensify product market competition and the channels through which they operate using a circular model of horizontal product differentiation with asymmetric costs we study the effects of increased price competition on market selection among incumbent firms cost reduction effort and entry of new firms the model also generates an endogenous demand for competition enhancing or retarding policies arising from cost heterogeneity and we demonstrate the possibility of a low competition political economy trap simulations of the model illustrate that the selection effects we analyse which traditional cost benefit analysis is unlikely to capture can be large

how much to save decision costs and retirement plan participation abstract deciding how much to save for retirement can be complicated drawing on a field experiment conducted with the department of defense we study whether such complexity depresses participation in an employer sponsored retirement saving plan we find that simplifying one dimension of the enrollment decision by highlighting a potential rate at which non participants might contribute increases participation in the plan similar communications that did not include a highlighted rate yield smaller effects the results highlight how reducing complexity on the intensive margin of a decision how much to contribute can affect extensive margin behavior whether to contribute at all in a setting of policy interest

what do nongovernmental organizations do nongovernmental organizations are one group of players who are active in the efforts of international development and increasing the welfare of poor people in poor countries nongovernmental organizations are largely staffed by altruistic employees and volunteers working towards ideological rather than financial ends their founders are often intense creative individuals who sometimes come up with a new product to deliver or a better way to deliver existing goods and services they are funded by donors many of them poor or anonymous yet these attributes should not be unfamiliar to economists development ngos like domestic nonprofits can be understood in the framework of not for profit contracting it is easy to conjure up a glowing vision of how the efforts of ngos could focus on problem solving without getting bogged down in corruption or bureaucracy but the strengths of the ngo model have some corresponding weaknesses in agenda setting decision making and resource allocation we highlight three factors in explaining the increased presence of ngos in the last few decades a trend towards more outsourcing of government services new ventures by would be not for profit entrepreneurs and the increasing professionalization of existing ngos

shrouded attributes consumer myopia and information suppression in competitive markets bayesian consumers infer that hidden add on prices e g the cost of ink for a printer are likely to be high prices if consumers are bayesian firms will not shroud information in equilibrium however shrouding may occur in an economy with some myopic or unaware consumers such shrouding creates an inefficiency which firms may have an incentive to eliminate by educating their competitors customers however if add ons have close substitutes a curse of debiasing arises and firms will not be able to profitably debias consumers by unshrouding add ons in equilibrium two kinds of exploitation coexist optimizing firms exploit myopic consumers through marketing schemes that shroud high priced add ons in turn sophisticated consumers exploit these marketing schemes it is not possible to profitably drive away the business of sophisticates it is also not possible to profitably lure either myopes or sophisticates to nonexploitative firms we show that informational shrouding flourishes even in highly competitive markets even in markets with costless advertising and even when the shrouding generates allocational inefficiencies

pricing of conspicuous goods a competitive analysis of social effects abstract social needs play an important role in the purchase of conspicuous goods in this article the authors extend traditional economic models to accommodate social needs such as desire for uniqueness and conformism and examine their implications for pricing conspicuous goods first in the context of a duopoly the authors identify the conditions under which the desire for uniqueness can increase demand among some consumers as the price of a product increases second the authors show that though the desire for uniqueness leads to higher prices and firm profits a desire for conformity leads to lower prices and profits third the authors find that consumers purchase high quality products not because of their desire for uniqueness but despite it finally marketers of conspicuous goods may find it beneficial not to emphasize the functional differences among their products when the need for uniqueness is high in a laboratory test the authors find support for the claim that demand for a product amo

the welfare economics of default options in 401 k plans default contribution rates for 401 k pension plans powerfully influence choices potential causes include opt out costs procrastination inattention and psychological anchoring using realistically parameterized models we show how the optimal default the magnitude of the welfare effects and the degree of normative ambiguity depend on the behavioral model the scope of the choice domain deemed welfare relevant the use of penalties for passive choice and other 401 k plan features while results are theory specific our analysis provides reasonably robust justifications for setting the default either at the highest contribution rate matched by the employer or contrary to common wisdom at zero jel d14 d91 j26 j32

small is beautiful motivational allocation in the non profit sector we build an occupational choice general equilibrium model with for profit firms non profit organizations and endogenous private warm glow donations lack of monitoring on the use of funds implies that an increase of funds of the non profit sector because of a higher incomein the for profit sector a stronger preference for giving or an inflow of foreign aid worsens the motivational composition and performance of the non profit sector we also analyze the conditions under which donors through linking donations to the motivational composition of the non profit sector non profits themselves through peer monitoring or the government using a tax financed public funding of non profits can eliminate the low effectiveness equilibrium we present supporting case study evidence from humanitarian emergencies and developing country ngo sector and humanitarian emergencies

a model of focusing in economic choice we present a generally applicable theory of focusing based on the hypothesis that a person focuses more on and hence overweights attributes in which her options dier more our model predicts that the decisionmaker is too prone to choose options with concentrated advantages relative to alternatives but maximizes utility when the advantages and disadvantages of alternatives are equally concentrated in intertemporal choice because the relative concentrations of an option s costs and benets can be dierent from the perspective of a single period and the perspective of the entire choice problem the decisionmaker often exhibits a form of time inconsistency she is present biased when the costs of current misbehavior are distributed over many future dates such as in harmful consumption but future biased when the benet of many

inferior products and profitable deception we analyse conditions facilitating profitable deception in a simple model of a competitive retail market firms selling homogenous products set anticipated prices that consumers understand and additional prices that naive consumers ignore unless revealed to them by a firm where we assume that there is a binding floor on the anticipated prices our main results establish that bad products those with lower social surplus than an alternative tend to be more reliably profitable than good products specifically 1 in a market with a single socially valuable product and sufficiently many firms a deceptive equilibrium in which firms hide additional prices does not exist and firms make zero profits but perversely 2 if the product is socially wasteful then a profitable deceptive equilibrium always exists furthermore 3 in a market with multiple products since a superior product both diverts sophisticated consumers and renders an inferior product socially wasteful in comparison it guarantees that firms can profitably sell the inferior product by deceiving consumers we apply our framework to the mutual fund and credit card markets arguing that it explains a number of empirical findings regarding these industries

rank regressions wage distributions and the gender gap in this paper we propose a novel rank based procedure to decompose changes in the gender wage gap into three components changes in the skill distribution changes in the wage structure and improvements in the position of women in a distribution of reference using cps data from 1979 and 1991 we perform the decomposition at each percentile of the wage distribution and show that the results are sensitive to the choice of distribution of reference male versus overall wage distribution we also find that relative wage gains of women may have been a source of increasing wage inequality among men

keeping a low profile what determines the allocation of aid by non governmental organizations ngos play an important role in international development cooperation but the allocation of ngo aid has rarely been mapped let alone explained based on a representative dataset for 61 important ngos from various oecd countries we analyze the targeting of ngo aid across a large number of recipient countries by jointly considering major determinants of ngo aid in a multivariate regression framework while our results show that ngos are more active in the neediest countries we reject the hypothesis that ngos complement official aid through engaging in so called difficult institutional environments rather they tend to replicate the location choices of official backdonors moreover ngos follow other ngos so that aid gets clustered finally ngos select recipient countries with common traits related to religion or colonial history taken together our findings suggest that ngos keep a low profile rather than distinguishing themselves from other donors and trying to excel under risky conditions

nature of human capital technology and ownership of public goods abstract besley and ghatak 2001 show that a public good should be owned by the agent who values the public good the most irrespective of technological factors in this paper we relax their assumptions in a natural way by allowing the agents to be indispensable and we show that the relative valuations are not the sole determinant of an optimal ownership structure but also the nature of human capital and technology matter

price matching guarantees as a direct signal of low prices if consumers believe that stores offering price matching guarantees pmgs charge low prices high search cost consumers will purchase from pmg stores this leads pmg stores demand to be less pric

choice based on reasons the case of attraction and compromise effects building on previous research this article proposes that choice behavior under preference uncertainty may be easier to explain by assuming that consumers select the alternative supported by the best reasons this approach provides an explanation for the so called attraction effect and leads to the prediction of a compromise effect consistent with the hypotheses the results indicate that 1 brands tend to gain share when they become compromise alternatives in a choice set 2 attraction and compromise effects tend to be stronger among subjects who expect to justify their decisions to others and 3 selections of dominating and compromise brands are associated with more elaborate and difficult decisions

consumer privacy and marketing avoidance a static model we introduce the concept of marketing avoidance consumer efforts to conceal themselves and to deflect marketing the setting is one in which sellers market some item through solicitations to potential consumers who differ in their benefit from the item and suffer harm from receiving solicitations concealment by one consumer induces sellers to shift solicitations to other consumers whereas deflection does not solicitations cause two externalities direct harm on consumers and the indirect cost of consumer concealment and deflection we find that in markets where the marginal cost of solicitation is sufficiently low efforts by low benefit consumers to conceal themselves will increase the cost effectiveness of solicitations and lead sellers to market more however concealment by high benefit consumers leads sellers to market less furthermore concealment by low benefit consumers increases direct privacy harm and consumer welfare is higher with deflection than concealment finally it is optimal to impose a charge on solicitations

when should the ask be a nudge the effect of default amounts on charitable donations abstracthow does setting a donation option as the default in a charitable appeal affect people s decisions in eight studies comprising 11 508 participants making 2 423 donation decisions in both experimental settings and a large scale natural field experiment the authors investigate the effect of choice option defaults on the donation rate average donation amount and the resulting revenue they find 1 a scale back effect in which low defaults reduce average donation amounts 2 a lower bar effect in which defaulting a low amount increases donation rate and 3 a default distraction effect in which introducing any defaults reduces the effect of other cues such as positive charity information contrary to the view that setting defaults will backfire defaults increased revenue in the field study however the findings suggest that defaults can sometimes be a self canceling intervention with countervailing effects of default option magnitude on decisions and resulting in no net effect

working for god evidence from a change in financing of nonprofit health care providers in uganda what motivates religious nonprofit health care providers this paper uses a change in financing of nonprofit health care providers in uganda to test two theories of organizational behavior we show

defaults and donations evidence from a field experiment we study the effects of defaults on charitable giving in a large scale field experiment on an online fundraising platform we exogenously vary default options along two choice dimensions the chari

brothers in alms coordination between nonprofits on markets for donations mission driven nonprofit organizations compete for donations through fundraising activities such competition can lead to inefficient outcomes if nonprofits impose externalities on each others output this paper studies the sustainability of fundraising coordination agreements using a game theoretic model of coalition formation we show that three key characteristics determine the stability of cooperation between nonprofits i the alliance formation rule ii the extent to which fundraising efforts are strategic complements substitutes and iii whether deviation from the agreements is by an individual or by a group of nonprofits we analyze how the interaction of these three features induces or not the stability of pareto optimal full coordination in fundraising

the effects of taxes on purchases of sugar sweetened carbonated soft drinks a quantile regression approach the consumption of large quantities of sugar sweetened carbonated soft drinks sscsd may lead to obesity which is associated with health problems such as diabetes cardiac diseases and mental health problems the effects of increasing the value added tax vat on purchases of sscsd are estimated obesity is more likely among heavy drinkers than among light or moderate drinkers therefore the effects on high and low purchasing households are estimated by using quantile regressions qrs on norwegian household purchase data since many households did not purchase sscsd during each survey period censored as well as ordinary qrs are used our results suggest that a vat increase from 13 to 25 will have the highest percentage effect among low purchasing households but the absolute effect is highest among high purchasing households low purchasing households will reduce their purchases by about 5 l while the reduction is almost 20 l among high purchasing households however the effects among high purchasi

save the poor shoot some bankers bilateral or multilateral organizations control about 90 of official overseas development assistance oda much of which is wasted this note traces aid failure to the daisy chain of principal agent beneficiary relationships linking rich donors to aid bureaucrats to poor recipients waste results when aid middlemen un intentionally misdirect oda waste can be reduced by clarifying domestic goals for oda using fewer middlemen with greater intrinsic motivation empowering recipients and or replacing bureaucracy with markets

offshoring with endogenous ngo activism the process of globalization is characterized by an impressive growth of global value chains as well as the proliferation of non governmental organizations ngos interacting with multinational firms this paper presents a model of offshoring and ngo firm interactions in which offshoring to a low regulation country allows a monopolist to implement a dirty technology undesired by consumers consumers can reduce the incentive for dirty production by financing an ngo monitoring the firm ngo emergence and offshoring can arise as joint and interacting outcomes for a range of trade costs ngo emergence allows firms to capture gains from globalization which would otherwise be unattainable somewhat paradoxically ngo emergence can be at the expense of consumers possibly leading to welfare losses through offshoring

coherent arbitrariness stable demand curves without stable preferences economic theories of valuation generally assume that prices of commodities and assets are derived from underlying fundamental values for example in finance theory asset prices are believed to reflect the market estimate of the discounted present value of the asset s payoff stream in labor theory the supply of labor is established by the tradeoff between the desire for consumption and the displeasure of work finally and most importantly for this chapter consumer microeconomics assumes that the demand curves for consumer products chocolates cds movies vacations drugs and so forth can be ultimately traced to the valuation of pleasures that consumers anticipate receiving from these products because it is difficult as a rule to measure fundamental values directly empirical tests of economic theory typically examine whether the effects of changes in circumstances on valuations are consistent with theoretical prediction for example whether labor supply responds appropriately to a change in the wage rate whether compensated demand curves for commodities are downward sloping or whether stock prices respond in the predicted way to share repurchases however such comparative static relationships are a necessary but not sufficient condition for fundamental valuation e g summers 1986 becker 1962 was perhaps the first to make this point explicitly when he observed that consumers choosing commodity bundles randomly from their budget set would nevertheless produce downward sloping demand curves

exploiting naivete about self control in the credit market we develop a model of the credit market where competitive lenders oer long term contracts specifying a non linear schedule of possible repayment schedules to borrowers who may dier both in their taste for immediate gratication and their prior beliefs about that taste the equilibrium contract to a borrower with given beliefs is discontinuous it features an advantageous option involving fast repayment and a penalty for deviating and repaying later these predictions seem to resemble some salient features of many credit card and mortgage contracts for fully sophisticated borrowers the discontinuity acts as a commitment device and yields fast repayment but all other borrowers even those with an arbitrarily small amount of naivete end up delaying repayment despite the penalty and receive little benet from commitment furthermore because they believe they will repay early they underestimate the cost of credit and hence borrow too much non sophisticated borrowers cross subsidize sophisticated borrowers while sophisticated borrowers discipline rms by preventing very exploitative contracts we identify natural conditions under which the above results obtain even if

the determinants of funding to ugandan nongovernmental organizations original ugandan data collected by the authors are used to examine the determinants of funding to local nongovernmental organizations ngos success in attracting grants from international donors depends mostly on network effects ngos that raise in kind resources locally tend to be young and managed by someone who is simultaneously employed elsewhere there is some evidence of crowding out ngos that receive grant funding are less likely to obtain resources locally whether in cash or in kind but this seems to be primarily the result of selection once ngo fixed effects are controlled for there is no evidence that ngos receive less revenue from fees and donation after obtaining a grant these results suggest that donors regard ugandan ngos as subcontractors of their development efforts not as charitable organizations in their own right

charitable giving emotions and the default effect we report an experiment to study the effect of defaults on charitable giving in three different treatments participants face varying default levels of donation in three other treatments that are paired with the first three they receive the same defaults but are informed that defaults are thought to have an effect on their donation decisions the emotional state of all individuals is monitored throughout the sessions using facereading software and some participants are required to report their emotional state after the donation decision we find that the default level has no effect on donations and informing individuals of the possible impact of defaults also has no effect the decision to donate is independent of prior emotional state unless specific subgroups of participants are considered donors experience a negative change in the valence of their emotional state subsequent to donating when valence is measured with facereading software this contrasts with the selfreport data in which donating correlates with a more positive reported subsequent emotional state

comparative advertising disclosing horizontal match information improved consumer information about horizontal aspects of products of similar quality leads to better consumer matching but also to higher prices so consumer surplus can go up or down while profits rise with enough quality asymmetry though the higher quality and hence larger firm s price falls with more information so both effects benefit consumers this occurs when comparative advertising is used against a large firm by a small one comparative advertising as it imparts more information therefore helps consumers although it also improves the profitability of the small firm overall welfare goes down because of the large loss to the attacked firm

product differentiation with imperfect information the paper employs a model of monopolistic competition and product differentiation with consumers who are not well informed about the specification of the offered brands welfare analysis of the degree of product differentiation in such a market concludes that the socially desirable product variety is limited due to consumers imperfect information consequently when the number of consumers is sufficiently large or economies to scale in production are sufficiently weak the market would offer excessive variety the literature on product differentiation is motivated by the observation that only some of the potential brands of a differentiated product are produced and sold it studies issues such as the role of the market structure in the determination of product diversity and the welfare performance of alternative markets in making this product selection for example see lancaster 1979 and salop 1979 in the spatial models tradition spence 1976 and dixit and stiglitz 1977 in the diversifying representative consumer tradition these studies model product selection as an equilibrium outcome of monopolistic competition the welfare analysis focuses on the tradeoff between consumer benefits which naturally increase with variety and production efficiency which owing to economies to scale decreases with variety they find no natural relation between the socially optimal variety and the market outcome the latter can be smaller or larger than the former depending on the parameters of the model although it is natural to expect that in some markets for differentiated products consumers are imperfectly informed about the available brands all these studies assume that consumers possess perfect information the present paper assumes that consumers are imperfectly informed and indeed obtains qualitatively different results first regardless of how significant are the production economies of scale the optimal variety is below a predetermined level that depends on the parameters of consumer utility and information second when consumer population is sufficiently large or economies to scale in production are sufficiently weak the market would offer excessive variety the explanation is that consumers imperfect information limits the extent to which they can exploit the variety offered in the market it is therefore a social waste to increase variety to a level that consumers cannot benefit from

contracting for aid abstract foreign aid is analyzed as a contract where the north gives a transfer to the south in return for poverty reduction regarded as an international public good the issue of conditionality is first discussed in a moral hazard framework and then under asymmetric information about the degree of altruism of the government of the south additional actors like local ngos and multilateral aid institutions are then added to the model the optimal contracts to avoid free riding or collusion are then presented

more dollars than sense refining our knowledge of development finance using aiddata summary in this introductory essay to the special issue we introduce a new dataset of foreign assistance aiddata that covers more bilateral and multilateral donors and more types of aid than existing datasets while also improving project level information about the purposes and activities funded by aid we utilize that data to provide a brief overview of important trends in foreign aid contributors to this special issue draw on aiddata as well as other sources to analyze aid transparency new donors not previously described or analyzed aid allocation and aid effectiveness our recurring theme in this introductory essay is that aiddata and these initial academic projects refine rather than revolutionize our understanding of aid the database has added significant numbers of new projects dollar amounts donors and details about those projects though there is much more yet to add we worry that aid debates have been driven by too little information and that many claims are based on limited or very poor evidence rectifying these problems will not be instantaneous refining knowledge takes a lot of time and hard work the common feature of the papers in this special issue is their careful attention to nuance and detail in spite of what some recent authors have claimed aid is neither a simple solution nor a sufficient cause of most problems in developing countries its motivations distribution and effects are complex and shifting capturing this complexity requires detailed data careful thought and sophisticated methods that allow scholars to make conditional causal and descriptive inferences 2011 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

optimal defaults and active decisions defaults often have a large influence on consumer decisions we identify an overlooked but practical alternative to defaults requiring individuals to make an explicit choice for themselves we study such active decisions in the context of 401 k saving we find that compelling new hires to make active decisions about 401 k enrollment raises the initial fraction that enroll by 28 percentage points relative to a standard opt in enrollment procedure producing a savings distribution three months after hire that would take 30 months to achieve under standard enrollment we also present a model of 401 k enrollment and derive conditions under which the optimal enrollment regime is automatic enrollment i e default enrollment standard enrollment i e default non enrollment or active decisions i e no default and compulsory choice active decisions are optimal when consumers have a strong propensity to procrastinate and savings preferences are highly heterogeneous financial illiteracy however favors default enrollment over active decision enrollment

are experienced people affected by a pre set default option results from a field experiment the objective of the present paper is to investigate the robustness of the well known result that pre set default options determine people s choices we do so by conducting a field experiment among environmental economists attending a large international conference on environmental economics the participants were at the time of registration randomly allocated to different treatments related to carbon offsetting what differs from earlier default studies is that our subjects have good knowledge about the good at hand we investigate whether the choices of these experienced individuals are affected by a pre set default option and we also study the effect of a treatment with no pre set default option our results together with previous findings indicate that the effect of a default option attenuates with experience