Altruism and Institutions: Theoretical, Econometric and Experimental Studies

从简单的反省中可以清楚地看出，道德和社会考虑影响着个人的激励和决定。认识到这一点，实验经济学的文献精心设计了抑制这些影响的实验，以便专注于纯粹的经济激励。这是一项重要的、合理的方法战略。现在是进入实验研究的下一个阶段的时候了。这项研究的目的是开发一种方法，以了解这些道德和社会考虑如何塑造实际的经济互动，如何产生非正式机制来利用这些道德和社会力量，以及我们如何有意识地设计制度，以利用道德和社会关切来获得最大的经济利益。第一部分重点介绍实验经济学。开展了门户实验，确定了特殊效应的存在和性质。总体而言，目标是建立新的调查领域，以了解在竞争市场中实体经济互动是如何构建和维持的。研究的第二部分着眼于与慈善捐赠有关的现实世界数据。这里的重点仍然是制度设计：例如，筹款机构如何应对政府拨款。这项研究中开发的代表性筹款人行为模型揭示了捐款如何回应政府拨款的新视角。更广泛的影响：这个模型将被用来回答这样的问题：慈善机构在捐赠后减少了多少筹款？遗失的捐款实际上是被排挤出去了，还是干脆转移到了其他慈善机构？这项研究的结果有望极大地改变对挤出假说的讨论。

It is clear from simple introspection that moral and social considerations affect the incentives and decisions of individuals. Cognizant of this, the literature in experimental economics has carefully designed experiments to suppress these effects in order to focus on the purely economic incentives. This is an important and justifiable methodological strategy. It is now time to move to the next stage in experimental research. The purpose of this study is to develop a methodology for understanding how these moral and social considerations shape actual economic interactions, how informal mechanisms arise to take advantage of these moral and social forces, and how we can deliberately design institutions to use moral and social concerns to the greatest economic advantage.There are two components to this study. Part 1 focuses on experimental economics. Gateway experiments are developed, establishing the existence and nature of particular effects. Overall, the objective is to establish new areas of inquiry into how real economic interactions are structured and maintained in a competitive market.Part 2 of the study looks at real world data relating to charitable giving. Here again the focus is on the institutional design: for example, how fundraising institutions react to government grants. The model of a representative fundraiser's behavior developed in this study reveals a new perspective on how donations respond to government grants. Broader Impacts: This model will be used to answer questions such as: How much do charities reduce fundraising after a grant? Are lost donations actually crowded out or simply displaced to other charities? The results of this study are expected significantly to alter the discussion of the crowding out hypothesis.