Altruism and Institutions: Theoretical, Econometric and Experimental Studies

利他主义与制度：理论、计量经济学和实验研究

• 批准号: 0320106
• 负责人: James Andreoni
• 金额: $ 27.39万
• 依托单位: University of Wisconsin-Madison
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-08-01 至 2007-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0320106&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Altruism; Institutions; Theoretical; Econometric; Experimental

One of the most significant contributions of experimental economics over the past decade is bringing a greater awareness of the altruism, fairness, and trust to economic theorists and policy makers. It now seems clear to most economists that individual altruism is both real and important for understanding many parts of the economic world around us. This project will study altruism from three different directions: Theory, econometric policy analysis, and laboratory experiments. The theoretical model will build on decades of research on givers to charity by combining that with new models of the strategic choices of charitable institutions. The objective is to study non-profit markets using the insights from game theory that were developed to study for-profit markets. In particular, what are the strategic mechanisms behind the common fund-raising practices of charities? The model captures the stylized fact that new charities tend to be "seeded'" by disproportionately large donors, or by government or foundations grants. The model shows that these large early donations can provide information and confidence to smaller donors, and this in turn allows the charity to gain a firm footing. The model illustrates the importance of foundation grants and government granting agencies in seeding new private non-profits that could not have had a successful start without the these seed grants. The second section uses tax-return data from non-profit arts and social service organizations to look at the actual effect of government grants on giving and fund-raising. We hope to confirm they hypotheses of the theoretical section, and to show how behavioral responses by non-profit firms can either dampen or magnify the impact of government grants. Our results will, we expect, have important consequences for both policy makers and fund-raisers. The final section outlines a series of experimental research projects. These controlled laboratory studies will examine various aspects of informal social institutions and formal "fund-raising" institutions. The objective is to see how individuals' natural interests in being fair, altruistic and cooperative can be captured and encouraged by simple institutional designs. We hope to discover some basic relationships between how people's interactions are structured and the amount of natural altruism that can be expressed. Our ultimate goal is to show that simple remedies, rather than complicated mechanisms, can have a big impact on harnessing the power of individual altruism.

在过去十年中，实验经济学的最重要贡献之一是将对利他主义，公平和信任的认识更加认识到经济理论家和政策制定者。现在，对于大多数经济学家来说，现在似乎很清楚，个人利他主义对于理解我们周围经济世界的许多地方都是真实而重要的。该项目将从三个不同的方向研究利他主义：理论，计量经济学政策分析和实验室实验。 理论模型将基于数十年来对慈善机构的捐助者的研究，并将其与慈善机构的战略选择的新模型相结合。 目的是利用游戏理论的见解来研究非营利市场，这些洞察力是为了研究营利性市场而开发的。 特别是，慈善机构共同筹款实践背后的战略机制是什么？该模型捕获了以下风格化的事实，即新慈善机构往往会被不成比例的大捐助者或政府或基金会赠款“种子”。 该模型表明，这些大型早期捐款可以为较小的捐助者提供信息和信心，这反过来又使慈善机构能够获得坚定的地位。该模型说明了基金会赠款和政府授予机构在没有这些种子赠款的情况下无法成功开始的新的私人非营利组织中的重要性。 第二部分使用来自非营利艺术和社会服务组织的税收数据数据来研究政府赠款对捐赠和筹款的实际影响。我们希望确认它们是理论部分的假设，并展示非营利公司的行为反应如何抑制或放大政府赠款的影响。我们期望我们的结果将对政策制定者和筹款人产生重要的影响。 最后一部分概述了一系列实验研究项目。这些受控的实验室研究将研究非正式社会机构和正式“筹款”机构的各个方面。 目的是了解个人在公平，无私和合作方面的自然利益如何受到简单的制度设计的捕获和鼓励。 我们希望发现人们的互动方式与可以表达的自然利他主义数量之间的一些基本关系。 我们的最终目标是表明简单的补救措施而不是复杂的机制可能会对利用个人利他主义的力量产生重大影响。