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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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012859684
We explore the importance of activism in the context of Earth Day. We use variation in weather to study the long-term effects of the original Earth Day on attitudes, environmental outcomes, and children's health. Unusually bad weather in a community on April 22, 1970, is associated 10 to 20...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014099838
Why do individuals volunteer their time even when recipients receive far less value than the donor's opportunity cost? Previous models of altruism that focus on the overall impact of a gift cannot rationalize this behavior, despite its prevalence. We develop a model that relaxes this assumption,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013081507
,000 subjects to test theory on price discounts and show large differences in donation behavior between donors who have previously …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013230821
Estimates of volunteering in the United States vary greatly from survey to survey and do not show the decline over time common to other measures of social capital. We argue that these anomalies are caused by the social processes that determine survey participation, in particular the propensity...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012753585
Volunteer activity is work performed without monetary recompense. This paper shows that volunteering is a sizeable economic activity in the U.S.; that volunteers have high skills and opportunity costs of time; that standard labor supply explanations of volunteering account for only a minor part...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013322118
This paper formalizes a sociological phenomenon entitled 'acting white'. The key idea is that individuals face a tension between signaling their type to the outside labor market and signaling their type to a peer group: signals that induce high wages can be signals that induce peer rejection. We...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014075858
Strategies selected by combining multiple signals suffer severe overfitting biases, because underlying signals are typically signed such that each predicts positive in-sample returns. “Highly significant” backtested performance is easy to generate by selecting stocks on the basis of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013019512
We examine how a social stigma of seeking information can inhibit learning. Consider a Seeker of uncertain ability who can learn about a task from an Advisor. If higher-ability Seekers need information less, then a Seeker concerned about reputation may refrain from asking to avoid signaling low...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012909127
Many authors argue that asymmetric information between the Federal Reserve and the public is important to the conduct and the effects of monetary policy. This paper tests for the existence of such asymmetric information by examining Federal Reserve and commercial inflation forecasts. We...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013218719