Randomized Controlled Trials on Fundraising and Discrimination

虽然传统的实证方法主要集中在描述相关性，但因果关系的识别已成为最近实证研究的主要关注点。随机对照试验在这一发展中起着至关重要的作用。这样的实验研究设计使我们能够评估以实践为导向的干预措施，也使我们能够探索支配经济决策的基本机制。这是本课题研究的动机和目的。特别是，该提案概述了两项涉及私人提供公共产品的随机对照试验和一项关于歧视成本的实验。第一个提出的研究是关于筹资中的替代效应。筹资经常被认为是公共产品供应不足的适当补救办法。经验证据支持这一观点：筹款经常会增加捐款。然而，大多数现有的实证研究都是评估单一筹款工具对仅由一个慈善机构筹集的捐款的影响。筹款是否会增加总资金，或者只是在慈善机构之间重新分配捐款，目前还不清楚。第一项研究采用随机对照试验解决了这个与福利相关的问题。第二项研究侧重于规模过大的筹款活动，导致公共产品供应水平低下。本文从一个众所周知的实证结果出发：个人捐赠的内在动机在人群中是异质性分布的。许多组织倾向于忽视这种异质性，而把他们现有的筹款活动的目标对准潜在的捐助者。这种行为使公共产品供应不足的现象长期存在：每一封征求信都不一定会引发额外的资金，而是与边际成本有关。因此，边际征求函导致净亏损。第二项随机对照试验首次研究了针对特定群体的筹款工具是否可以抵消这种低效率。第三项拟议研究涉及歧视的经济成本。歧视对被歧视者有严重后果：它经常导致失业，降低个人生产力，并意味着少数群体的政治利益没有得到充分代表。然而，人们对歧视者的后果知之甚少。特别是，当歧视行为对个人来说代价高昂时，我们对个人是否愿意为此付出代价的了解是有限的。例如，如果个人回避不喜欢的小组成员提供的有价值的信息，就会出现这种情况，这可能导致生产力损失。第三项研究考虑了这种情况，并考察了很少研究的歧视成本对歧视者行为的影响。

While traditional empirical methods have mainly focused on describing correlations, the identification of causal relationships has become the prime concern of more recent empirical studies. Randomized Controlled Trials play a vital role in this development. Such experimental research designs allow us to evaluate practice-oriented interventions and also enable us to explore fundamental mechanisms that govern economic decision making. This is both the motivation and the aim of the studies in this proposal. In particular, this proposal outlines two Randomized Controlled Trials dealing with the private provision of public goods and one experiment on the costs of discrimination.The first proposed study is concerned with substitution effects in fundraising. Fundraising is frequently said to be an appropriate remedy for the under-provision of public goods. Empirical evidence buttresses this belief: fundraising frequently increases donations. However, most of the available empirical studies evaluate the effects of single fundraising-instruments on donations raised by only one charity. Whether fundraising increases total funds or only reallocates donations between charities is not well understood. The first study addresses this welfare-relevant question applying a Randomized Controlled Trial.The second study focuses on over-sized fundraising campaigns, resulting in an inefficiently low provision level of public goods. The proposed paper starts from a widely-known empirical result: individuals’ intrinsic motivations to donate are heterogeneously distributed in the population. Many organization tend to ignore this heterogeneity and target their available fundraising-campaigns at the universe of potential donors. This behavior perpetuates the under-provision of public goods: each solicitation letter is not necessarily triggering additional funds but is associated with marginal costs. As a result, the marginal solicitation letter leads to a net loss. The second Randomized Controlled Trial studies for the first time, whether group-specific targeting of fundraising tools can countervail this type of inefficiency.The third proposed study deals with the economic costs of discrimination. Discrimination has severe consequences for those being discriminated against: it frequently results in unemployment, reduces individuals’ productivity, and implies that political interests of minorities are underrepresented. Yet little is known about the consequences for discriminators. In particular, our knowledge about whether individuals are ready to pay for engaging in the act of discrimination when it is costly for them is limited. For example, such a situation can arise if individuals avoid valuable information provided by a member of a disliked group, which may result in productivity losses. The third study considers such a situation and examines the little-studied effect of the costs of discrimination on the behavior of discriminators.