There is a heightened lack of clarity and understanding about the new U.S. business forms both in terms of theory and practice, especially with regard to relative priorities of social good (or the absence thereof), decision-making, and meaningful accountability thereto (or the lack thereof). As...

We develop a model that accounts for the decay of the average contribution observed in experiments on voluntary contributions to a public good. The novel idea is that people's moral motivation is "weak." Their judgment about the right contribution depends on observed contributions by group...

We present a theory of charitable fund-raising in which it is costly to solicit donors. We fully characterize the optimal solicitation strategy that maximizes donations net of fundraising costs. The optimal strategy dictates that the fund-raiser target only those individuals whose equilibrium...

Fundraisers often start their campaigns by soliciting the wealthier, more recognized and respected individuals in a community. We examine whether an explanation for such a solicitation ordering may be that people prefer to associate with those of higher social ranking than themselves. Using a...

Private provision of public goods relies heavily on contributions to a wide variety of charities. But the quality of goods and services produced by charities is heterogeneous and essentially unknown to donors. To diminish the asymmetry, third-parties provide standardized information in the form...

Experiments involving multiple public goods with contribution thresholds capture many features of charitable giving environments in which donors try to coordinate their contributions across various potential recipients. We present results from a laboratory experiment that introduces endowment...

We present results from an experiment with multiple public goods, where each good produces benefits only if total contributions to it reach a minimum threshold. The experiment allows us to compare contributions in a benchmark treatment with a single public good and in treatments with more public...

Matching schemes, where a party matches the contribution of others, reduce the effective price of a good and aim to foster its demand. We review the empirical literature on the effectiveness of these schemes in the context of public goods, especially in the field of charitable giving. As...

When multiple charities, social programs and community projects simultaneously vie for funding, donors risk miscoordinating their contributions leading to an inefficient distribution of funding across projects. Community chests and other intermediary organizations facilitate coordination among...