Estimates of volunteering in the United States vary greatly from survey to survey and do not show the decline over time common to other measures of social capital. We argue that these anomalies are caused by the social processes that determine survey participation, in particular the propensity...

It is common for charitable organizations to allow donors to place material restrictions on their gifts. Nonprofits and fundraisers generally believe that allowing gift restrictions will increase donation revenue. Restricted gifts are costly to the nonprofit because of increased management...

Educational achievement is positively correlated with religious devotion. However, those religious sects which are more devoted have, on average, lower levels of education. Evangelical Protestants, for example, have the highest level of religious devotion but the lowest level of educational...

We analyze an extensive sample of tax-exempt and taxable municipal bonds to better understand how municipals behave without federal tax-exemption. We find taxable municipals are issued at higher yields in high state tax rate jurisdictions, are less likely to be issued in these areas, and more...

Gift restrictions are a common tool used by donors to ensure charitable intent. Due to increased monitoring costs and the loss of flexibility, gift restrictions are costly to the recipient nonprofit. Using an economic experiment, we study the impact of offering donors the option to restrict...

We examine the role of religion in charitable giving and find that the religious preference of both the donor and the recipient organization influence giving behavior. By exploiting a panel survey of charitable giving, we demonstrate that traditional empirical analysis on charitable giving masks...