Agricultural & Resource Economics Working Papers
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/19596
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Item Independent vs. Collaborative Fundraising: Understanding the Role of Information(2019-02) Eckel, Catherine; Guney, Begum; Uler, NeslihanWe use “real donation” laboratory experiments to compare independent fundraising, where donation requests from different charities arrive sequentially to potential donors, with collaborative fundraising, where donation requests from different charities arrive simultaneously. We find that collaborative fundraising generates significantly larger total donations compared to independent fundraising. We show that the order of requests affects the level of donations only in independent fundraising; in particular, participants donated larger amounts to charities whose requests arrived earlier. We then test whether these differences might be explained by the informational asymmetry between these two fundraising mechanisms by varying the information received by the subjects.Item The Impact of Taxes and Wasteful Government Spending on Giving(2020-05) Sheremeta, Roman M.; Uler, NeslihanWe examine how taxes impact charitable giving and how this relationship is affected by the degree of wasteful government spending. In our model, individuals make donations to charities knowing that the government collects a flat-rate tax on income (net of charitable donations) and redistributes part of the tax revenue. The rest of the tax revenue is wasted. The model predicts that a higher tax rate increases charitable donations. Surprisingly, the model shows that a higher degree of waste decreases donations (when the elasticity of marginal utility with respect to consumption is high enough). We test the model’s predictions using a laboratory experiment with actual donations to charities. We find that the tax rate has an insignificant effect on giving. The degree of waste, however, has a large, negative and highly significant effect on giving.Item Behavioral Sources of the Demand for Carbon Offsets: An Experimental Study(2017-03) Kuhn, Kai-Uwe; Uler, NeslihanVoluntary carbon offset schemes have sprung up in the last decade offering individuals opportunities to neutralize their own carbon footprint. These schemes strongly appeal to the personal responsibility of individuals in reducing the carbon emissions they cause. In this paper we report on a controlled laboratory experiment to better understand the behavioral motivations driving the purchase of carbon offsets, i.e., payments towards the reduction of damages to the environment. We show that the opportunity to offset damages does not affect the total damages created by the individuals when individuals trade in competitive markets. At the same time, we find a stable demand for carbon offsets when the price is sufficiently low. Therefore, introduction of carbon offsets increases efficiency by eliminating some of the damages ex-post. Behavior, however, is very heterogeneous. Individuals with a high (low) personal-responsibility index increase their offset purchases as their own damage (total damages) increases, but do not condition their offsetting behavior on the total damages (own damages) created.Item When Income Depends on Performance and Luck: The Effects of Culture and Information on Giving(2017-01) Rey-Biel, Pedro; Sheremeta, Roman M.; Uler, NeslihanWe study how giving depends on income and luck, and how culture and information about the determinants of others’ income affect this relationship. Our data come from an experiment conducted in two countries, the US and Spain, that have different beliefs about how income inequality arises. We find that when individuals are informed about the determinants of income, there are no cross-cultural differences in giving. However, when uninformed, Americans give less than the Spanish, and this difference persists even after controlling for beliefs, personal characteristics, and values.