This paper surveys the literature on group selection. I describe the early contributions and the group selection controversy. I also describe the main approaches to group selection in the recent literature; fixation, assortative group formation, and reproductive externalities. -- Altruism ; spite...

From 1917 to 2012, donations by high-income households in the USA have moved inversely with income inequality. This association contradicts historical narratives and prevailing theory, both of which that imply that high-income households donate rising income shares when inequality increases. The...

A substantial body of research suggests that economists are less generous than other professionals and that economics students are less generous than other students. We address this question using administrative data on donations to social programs by students at the University of Washington....

This paper uses the responses to questions about charitable contributions from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) between 1992 and 2022 to consider the rates of US households contributing money or time to charitable organizations. The fraction donating $500 or more remained relatively...

This paper computes the share of all household giving accounted for by the American households donating the largest amounts over the 1960–2012 period. The share of donations accounted for by a minority of top donors has risen sharply over this period. This rising concentration is driven by...

The philanthropic sector is highly consequential, particularly in the United States, and the most important policies directed toward this sector are tax policies. Yet most economic analysis of the optimal tax treatment of charitable giving is ad hoc, treating it as a subject unto itself. This...

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act eliminated federal charitable giving incentives for roughly 20 percent of US income-tax payers. We study the impact of this on giving. Basic theory and our empirical results suggest heterogeneous effects for taxpayers with different amounts of itemizable expenses....