EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Trust, ability‐to‐pay, and charitable giving

Ida Ferrara and Paul Missios

Journal of Public Economic Theory, 2020, vol. 22, issue 3, 583-629

Abstract: In the literature on privately provided public goods, altruism has been motivated by what contributions can accomplish (public goods philanthropy), by the pleasure of giving (warm‐glow philanthropy), or by the desire to personally make a difference (impact philanthropy). Underlying these motives is the idea that individuals trust that their donations reach their goal. We revisit these models but allow for distrust in the institutional structures involved. An important result we derive is that trust considerations determine whether crowding out is less or more than complete, and we thus open up possibilities in terms of the extent of crowding out not currently available. We also model socially motivated philanthropy when income‐heterogeneous donors take trust and ability‐to‐pay into account. With ability‐to‐pay in social motivation, an important result we obtain is that low‐income donors may contribute more than high‐income donors (in both absolute and percentage‐of‐income terms), giving a potential theoretical foundation to the frequently observed “U‐shaped” pattern of giving.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/jpet.12393

Related works:
Working Paper: Trust, Ability-to-Pay, and Charitable Giving (2015) Downloads
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:22:y:2020:i:3:p:583-629

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1097-3923

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economic Theory is currently edited by Rabah Amir, Gareth Myles and Myrna Wooders

More articles in Journal of Public Economic Theory from Association for Public Economic Theory Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:22:y:2020:i:3:p:583-629