This paper makes three contributions to the literature on private provision of public goods. First, we identify limitations of the frequently used specification test that distinguishes between the standard models of pure and impure altruism based on the extent of crowding out. While the...

In SIR models, infection rates are typically exogenous, whereas individuals adjust their behavior in reality. City-level data across the globe suggest that mobility falls in response to fear, proxied by Google searches. Incorporating experimentally validated measures of social preferences at the...

To understand the "pure" incentives of altruism, economic laboratory research on humans almost always forbids communication between subjects. In reality, however, altruism usually requires interaction between givers and receivers, which clearly must influence choices. Charities, for example,...

Economic research examining how educational intervention programs affect primary and secondary schooling focuses largely on test scores although the interventions can affect many other outcomes. This paper examines how an educational intervention, a voucher program, affected students' altruism....

Community targeting of vote payments -- defined as the saturation of entire neighborhoods with cash prior to elections -- is widespread in the developing world. In this paper, we utilize laboratory experiments conducted in the U.S. and Kenya to demonstrate that, relative to individual targeting,...