The recent proposal for tax reform developed by the Department of the Treasury suggests dramatic changes in the structure of the personal income tax. One likely side effect of the changes will be a significant adverse impact on the level of charitable contributions by individuals.This paper...

We present the first estimates of investment returns and distribution rates for U.S. non-profit endowment funds, based on a comprehensive sample of 29,762 organizations drawn from Internal Revenue Service filings for 2009-2017. Non-profit endowments badly underperform market benchmarks, with...

The tremendous increase in the use of donor-advised funds for charitable donations has led policy-makers to ask if there is sufficient regulation and oversight of DAFs. In the absence of account level reporting, the debate has focused on the average payout rates of DAF sponsoring organizations,...

Tax return data, which has been a principal source for econometric investigations of the behavioral response to tax policy, is subject to misreporting that may bias estimates of tax responsiveness. The misreporting arises because understatement of taxable income may itself be a function of an...

Founded in 1441, King's College was one of Cambridge University's wealthiest Colleges, endowed with a vast agricultural portfolio. John Maynard Keynes was appointed bursar just after WWI and initiated a major reallocation to equities, an innovation at least as radical as the late 20th century...

Using data for more than 800 college and university endowment funds over 2003-2011, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the spending policies used in practice as well as how frequently and why those mandates are revised over time. Given the long-term and relatively static nature of the...