Showing 1 - 10 of 1,421
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
Despite the increasing use by charities, significant uncertainty exists about optimal online fundraising mechanisms, especially when large donor pools show substantial heterogeneities. We use an online natural field experiment with over 700,000 subjects to test theory on price discounts and show...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013230821
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
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
In 2005, hurricanes Katrina and Rita forced many children to relocate across the Southeast. While schools quickly enrolled evacuees, receiving families worried about the impact of evacuees on non-evacuee students. Data from Houston and Louisiana show that, on average, the influx of evacuees...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013156689
The government often provides relief against large risks, such as disasters. A simple, general rationale for this role of government is considered here that applies even when private contracting to share risks is not subject to market imperfections. Specifically, the optimal private sharing of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013052679
I examine academic performance and college going for public school students affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Students who are forced to switch schools due to the hurricanes experience sharp declines in test scores in the first year following the hurricane. However, by the second and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013232038
This paper analyzes how different organizational structures between funding and implementing agencies affect the quality of aid delivered and social agendas pursued across neighboring villages in a set disaster context. We model the implied objective functions and trade-offs concerning aid...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013113102