A substantial experimental literature suggests that a personal solicitation is an effective way to induce people to make charitable donations. We examine whether this result generalizes to a non-experimental setting. Specifically, we estimate the effect of a marginal personal solicitation using...

Our main findings are: 1) Individuals who took out student loans are less likely to make a gift, other things being the same. We conjecture that this phenomenon is caused by an "annoyance effect" -- alumni resent the fact that they are burdened with loans. 2) Scholarship aid reduces the size of...

This paper provides evidence concerning the extent to which consumers of liquor employ commitment devices. One widely recommended commitment strategy is to regulate alcohol consumption by deliberately manipulating availability. The paper assesses the prevalence of the "availability strategy" by...