Regulating altruistic agents

Altruism or `regard for others' can encourage self-restraint among generators of negative externalities, thereby mitigating the externality problem. We explore how introducing impure altruism into standard regulatory settings alters regulatory prescriptions. We show that the optimal calibration of both quantitative controls and externality taxes are affected. It also leads to surprising results on the comparative performance of instruments. Under quantity-based regulation welfare is increasing in the propensity for altruism in the population; under price-based regulation the relationship is non-monotonic. Price-based regulation is preferred when the population is either predominantly altruistic or predominantly selfish, quantity-based regulation for cases in between

Government Grants to Private Charities: Do They Crowd-Out Giving or Fundraising?

When the government makes a grant to a private charitable organization, does it displace private giving? This is one of the fundamental policy questions in public finance, and much theoretical and empirical research has been devoted to understanding the relationship between private donations and government funding. Under the classic crowding-out hypothesis, donors let their involuntary tax contributions and substitute for their voluntary contributions. This paper raises the prospect of a second reason: that the stretegic response of the charity will be to pull back on its fundraising efforts after receiving a grant. We develop a theoretical model to show a charity that chooses its level of fundraising efforts strategically will reduce fundraising in response to government grants. We then analyze data on tax returns of 474 social services organizations and 245 arts organizations between 1982 and 1996. These two types of charitable organizations differ in both the nature of the services they provide and in their reliance on private donations and government grants. We find evidence that government grants to nonprofits are causing significant reductions in fundraising efforts, after looking at different types of fundraising activities. This finding is important for two reasons. First, it means that the behavior of the nonprofit organizations is consistent with the predictions of an economic model within a strategic environment. Second, it adds an important new dimension to the policy discussions on the effectiveness of government grants to increase the services of charitable nonprofit organizations. Charities are not passive receptables of contributions, as they have so often been treated in the past, but are active players in the market for donations. When the government gives a grant to charities, we shoul take into account the behavioral response of the charity itself, as well as the behavioral responses of the individual donors.nonprofit organizations, fundraising, crowd-out, private donations, government grants

Is Crowding Out Due Entirely to Fundraising? Evidence from a Panel of Charities

When the government gives a grant to a private charitable organization, do the donors to that organization give less? If they do, is it because the grants crowd out donors who feel they gave through taxes (classic crowd out), or is it because the grant crowds out the fund-raising of the charities who, after getting the grant, reduce efforts of fund-raising (fund-raising crowd out)? This is the first paper to separate these two effects. Using a panel of more than 8,000 charities, we find that crowding out is significant, at about 72 percent. We find this crowding out is due primarily to reduced fund-raising. Depending on which types of organizations are included in the analysis, crowding out attributable to classic crowd-out ranges from 30% to a slight crowd-in effect, while fund-raising crowd out ranges from 70% to over 100% of all crowd out. Such a finding could have important consequences for how governments structure grants to non-profits. Our results indicate, for example, that requirements that charities match a fraction of government grants with increases in private donations might be a feasible policy that could reduce the detrimental effects of crowding out.charitable giving; fundraising; crowd-out

Crowding-Out Charitable Contributions in Canada: New Knowledge from the North

Using data from charitable organizations in the US, authors have established that government grants to charities largely crowd out giving from other sources, but that this reduction is due mostly to reduced fundraising activities of the charity itself. We use much more detailed data from over 6000 charities in Canada, measured for up to 15 years, to provide valuable new insights into this phenomenon. In particular, dollars received from individuals is largely unchanged by government grants. Instead, the crowding out is attributable to two other sources of donations not differentiated in US data: giving from other charities and charitable foundations, and donations gained from special fundraising activities, like galas or sponsorships. Only the latter-which is about half of the measured crowding out-represents a potential loss of dollars to the charitable sector as a result of government grants.

Reliable source of conditional non-Gaussian states from single-mode thermal fields

We address both theoretically and experimentally the generation of pulsed non-Gaussian states from classical Gaussian ones by means of conditional measurements. The setup relies on a beam splitter and a pair of linear photodetectors able to resolve up to tens of photons in the two outputs. We show the reliability of the setup and the good agreement with the theory for a single-mode thermal field entering the beam splitter and present a thorough characterization of the photon statistics of the conditional states.Comment: 18 pages, 12 figure

Resilient manufacturing during pandemic: the case of masks and ventilators

The health emergency has brought new needs in the health field. Antonio Andreoni and Dan Hill say that considering these projects as strategic design “would allow the emergence of broader perspectives” in medical innovation

Intensity correlations, entanglement properties and ghost imaging in multimode thermal-seeded parametric downconversion: Theory

We address parametric-downconversion seeded by multimode pseudo-thermal fields. We show that this process may be used to generate multimode pairwise correlated states with entanglement properties that can be tuned by controlling the seed intensities. Multimode pseudo-thermal fields seeded parametric-downconversion represents a novel source of correlated states, which allows one to explore the classical-quantum transition in pairwise correlations and to realize ghost imaging and ghost diffraction in regimes not yet explored by experiments.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

Conditional measurements on multimode pairwise entangled states from spontaneous parametric downconversion

We address the intrinsic multimode nature of the quantum state of light obtained by pulsed spontaneous parametric downconversion and develop a theoretical model based only on experimentally accessible quantities. We exploit the pairwise entanglement as a resource for conditional multimode measurements and derive closed formulas for the detection probability and the density matrix of the conditional states. We present a set of experiments performed to validate our model in different conditions that are in excellent agreement with experimental data. Finally, we evaluate nonGaussianity of the conditional states obtained from our source with the aim of discussing the effects of the different experimental parameters on the efficacy of this type of conditional state preparation

Robot adoption and FDI driven transformation in the automotive industry

This paper explores the relationship between inward foreign direct investments and the adoption of industrial robots, across different segments of the automotive value chain. Using the International Federation of Robotics and FDI Market datasets at a fine level of disaggregation of the automotive sector, we investigate the extent to which FDIs are related to the operational stock of industrial robots in 34 countries over the period 2005-2014. We find distinct patterns linking FDIs and robot adoption for different groups of countries and for different segments of the automotive value chain, that, is assembling and components production. With some relevant exceptions, FDIs are found to be highly correlated with robot adoption in the assembling segment across major leading countries. However, this correlation becomes weak for components production. To explain this differential role of FDIs in robot adoption, we formulate hypotheses around the country-specific drivers of robotisation for the components segment by pointing to the role of domestic ecosystems of suppliers and industrial policy as drivers of technology absorption and diffusion

Experimental reconstruction of photon statistics without photon counting

Experimental reconstructions of photon number distributions of both continuous-wave and pulsed light beams are reported. Our scheme is based on on/off avalanche photodetection assisted by maximum-likelihood estimation and does not involve photon counting. Reconstructions of the distribution for both semiclassical and quantum states of light are reported for single-mode as well as for multimode beams.Comment: Revised version: in press on PRL. 4 pages, 4 fig