Private provision of public goods and information diffusion in social groups

We describe a model of fundraising in social groups, where private information about quality of provision is transmitted by social proximity. Individuals engage in voluntary provision of a pure collective good that is consumed by both neighbours and non-neighbours. We show that, unlike in the case of private goods, better informed individuals face positive incentives to incur a cost to share information with their neighbours. These incentives are stronger, and provision of the pure public good greater, the smaller are individuals’ social neighbourhoods

Scale economies in nonprofit provision, technology adoption and entry

We study competition between nonprofit providers that supply a collective service through increasing-returns-to-scale technologies under conditions of free entry. When providers adopt a not-for-profit mission, the absence of a residual claimant can impede entry, protecting the position of an inefficient incumbent. Moreover, when providers supply goods that are at least partly public in nature, they may be unable to sustain the adoption of more efficient technologies that feature fixed costs, because buyers (private donors) face individual incentives to divert donations towards charities that adopt inferior, lower-fixed-cost technologies. These incentives may give rise to a technological race to the bottom, where nonprofit providers forgo opportunities to exploit scale economies. In these situations, government grants in support of core costs can have a nonneutral effect on entry, technology adoption, and industry performance

The price elasticity of charitable giving : does the form of tax relief matter?

This paper uses a survey-based approach to test alternative methods of channeling tax relief to donors – as a tax rebate for the donor or as a matched payment to the receiving charity. On accounting grounds these two are equivalent but, in line with earlier experimental studies, we find that gross donations are significantly more responsive to a match change than to a rebate change. We show that the difference can largely be explained by the fact that a majority of donors do not adjust their nominal donations in response to a change in subsidy. This evidence adds to the growing empirical literature suggesting that consumers may not react to tax changes. In the case of tax subsidies for donations, this has implications for policy design – for the UK a match-based system is likely to be more effective at increasing money going to charities

Genomic Relationships, Novel Loci, and Pleiotropic Mechanisms across Eight Psychiatric Disorders

Genetic influences on psychiatric disorders transcend diagnostic boundaries, suggesting substantial pleiotropy of contributing loci. However, the nature and mechanisms of these pleiotropic effects remain unclear. We performed analyses of 232,964 cases and 494,162 controls from genome-wide studies of anorexia nervosa, attention-deficit/hyper-activity disorder, autism spectrum disorder, bipolar disorder, major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, and Tourette syndrome. Genetic correlation analyses revealed a meaningful structure within the eight disorders, identifying three groups of inter-related disorders. Meta-analysis across these eight disorders detected 109 loci associated with at least two psychiatric disorders, including 23 loci with pleiotropic effects on four or more disorders and 11 loci with antagonistic effects on multiple disorders. The pleiotropic loci are located within genes that show heightened expression in the brain throughout the lifespan, beginning prenatally in the second trimester, and play prominent roles in neurodevelopmental processes. These findings have important implications for psychiatric nosology, drug development, and risk prediction.Peer reviewe

Rational inattention to subsidies for charitable contributions

Evidence suggests that individuals fail to process all relevant attributes when making decisions. Recent literature has mainly focused on shrouded attributes. Here we present a simple model where agents rationally choose not to process attributes even when they are not shrouded, and we investigate its predictions for the case of subsidies for charitable donations. These are offered as rebates or matches. Both lower the price of giving, but, crucially, with different implications for rational non-processing choices. Survey and experimental evidence on donation responses to equivalent changes in the match and the rebate is consistent with our model of rational inattention

Online fundraising : the perfect ask?

Online platforms provide an opportunity for individuals to fundraise for their favourite charities and charitable causes. In recent years, individual charity fundraising through these platforms has become a mass activity. Using JustGiving, the UK’s biggest charity fundraising platform, 21 million people have raised £1.5 billion for over 13,000 charities and causes since the website was set up in 2001. Recent figures suggest that online donations are still a relatively small part of overall giving; an estimated 7% of the total dollar amount given in the US and used by 7% of UK donors. But online and text giving are growing at a faster rate than total donations, indicating that this share will grow. In this paper, we present insights on individual fundraising from micro-econometric analysis of JustGiving data. The analysis exploits a number of different data sub-samples. The largest comprises 416,313 fundraisers who were active JustGiving users at the time of an online survey that ran from October 2010 – April 2011. We also analyse data on 10,597 fundraisers who ran in the 2010 London marathon and from a sample of 39,238 fundraisers who had linked their fundraising pages to their Facebook page. Details on all these samples are given in the Appendix

Entry and fixed costs in charitable sectors

Fixed costs that are not sunk do not translate into entry barriers against for-profit competitors. We show that in the case of non-commercial, not- for-profit providers, the presence of fixed costs may protect the position of an inefficient incumbent. In these situations, successfully contesting the position of incumbents may require new providers to adopt a for- profit organizational form – notwithstanding the moral hazard problem that this might entail when quality of provision is difficult to monitor – or, alternatively, to secure core funding from government or from a large private donor

Scale economies in nonprofit provision, technology adoption and entry

We study competition between nonprofit providers supplying a collective service through increasing-returns-to-scale technologies. When providers adopt a not-for-profit mission, the absence of a residual claimant can impede entry, protecting the position of an inefficient incumbent. Moreover, when the goods provided are at least partly public in nature, buyers face individual incentives to divert donations towards providers that adopt low-fixed cost technologies, and so providers may forgo the adoption of more efficient technologies that require fixed costs. In these situations, government grants in support of core costs can have a non-neutral effect on entry, technology adoption, and industry performance