We analyze the offering, asking, and granting of help or other benefits as a three-stage game with bilateral private information between a person in need of help and a potential help-giver. Asking entails the risk of rejection, which can be painful: since unawareness of the need can no longer be...

In an experiment that elicits subjects' willingness to pay (WTP) for the outcome of a lottery, we confirm the fourfold pattern of risk attitudes described by Kahneman and Tversky. In addition, we document a systematic effect of stake sizes on the magnitude and sign of the relative risk premium,...

What causes adverse policing outcomes, such as excessive uses of force and unnecessary arrests? Prevailing explanations focus on problematic officers or deficient regulations and oversight. Here, we introduce a new, overlooked perspective. We suggest that the cognitive demands inherent in...

This paper uses the responses to questions about charitable contributions from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) between 1992 and 2022 to consider the rates of US households contributing money or time to charitable organizations. The fraction donating $500 or more remained relatively...

Microgiving, a new form of digital fundraising, operates by soliciting minuscule, recurring donations from large numbers of potential donors. We evaluate a charity subscription program operated by Alibaba, China's largest retail platform, which allows sellers to pledge a tiny portion of a...

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...

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act eliminated federal charitable giving incentives for roughly 20 percent of US income-tax payers. We study the impact of this on giving. Basic theory and our empirical results suggest heterogeneous effects for taxpayers with different amounts of itemizable expenses....

We investigate how locus of control beliefs - the extent to which individuals attribute control over events in their life to themselves as opposed to outside factors - affect prosocial behavior and the private provision of public goods. We begin by developing a conceptual framework showing how...