We propose a model of charity competition in which informed giving alone can explain quality heterogeneity across similar charities. It is this heterogeneity that also creates the demand for information. In equilibrium, too few donors pay to be informed; but interestingly, informed giving may...

Evidence suggests that donors have little demand for information before giving to charity. To understand this behavior and its policy implications, we present a model in which each individual can acquire costly information about her true value of charity. We observe that an individual who...

While existing theory predicts that matching leadership gifts raise more voluntary contributions for public goods than seed money, recent experiments find otherwise. We reconcile the two by studying a model of leadership giving in a large economy with incomplete information about the quality of...

Existing experimental studies find weak support for the theoretical prediction that matching leadership giving alleviates free-riding and raises more voluntary contributions for public goods relative to seed money. However, while most experimental studies use exogenous variations of the...