Donating to charity requires time, effort and attention. If the nuisance costs to give are perceived to be large, charities may lose out on donations. We develop a non-parametric test for the presence of these costs and conduct a large-scale field experiment on giving to show that nuisance costs...

We examine optimal incentives for charitable giving with a large-scale field experiment involving 26 charities and over 112,000 unique individuals. The price of giving is varied by offering a fixed match if the donation meets a threshold amount (e.g. "give at least $25 and the charity receives a...

Philanthropy is one of the enduring areas of economic research. Why would people work hard only to give their earnings away? The paper explores the theoretical foundations, as well as the empirical and policy research on philanthropy. This paper reviews over 25 years worth of economic research,...

What are people buying when they give money away? Is pure altruism possible? Who benefits from grants to charities and subsidies to givers? Is religious giving different? Which fundraising approaches "work", and is more charity always better? Questions like these make philanthropy and...

Individuals frequently exploit “flexibility" built into decision environments to give less. They use subjectivity to justify options benefiting themselves over others, they avoid information that may encourage them to give, and they avoid the ask itself. In this paper, we examine whether a...