Time-Inconsistent Charitable Giving

James Andreoni and Marta Serra-Garcia

No 22824, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We motivate this paper with a puzzle. When we asked subjects to give five dollars to charity today, about 30 percent agree, but when the donation would instead be paid in one week, giving increases by 50 percent. The puzzle is that received models of self-control cannot explain this time-inconsistent charitable giving. This suggests a new approach is needed for intertemporal pro-sociality. We present one solution to the puzzle in a theoretical model and two new experiments. Our explanation relies on the rich dynamics of warm glow, and specifically image concerns, in prosocial behavior.

JEL-codes: C91 D64 D9 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
Note: PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published as Andreoni, James & Serra-Garcia, Marta, 2021. "Time inconsistent charitable giving," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22824.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Time inconsistent charitable giving (2021)
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:nbr:nberwo:22824

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22824

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().