The philanthropic sector is highly consequential, particularly in the United States, and the most important policies directed toward this sector are tax policies. Yet most economic analysis of the optimal tax treatment of charitable giving is ad hoc, treating it as a subject unto itself. This...

Recent debate on the effectiveness of tax rebates has concentrated on the degree to which they can affect economic activity, which depends on the methodology, the state of the economy, and the underlying assumptions. A better approach to assess the effectiveness of these monetary transfers is by...