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Does Where You Stand Depend on Where You Sit? Tithing Donations and Self-Serving Beliefs

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Author Info
Gordon B. Dahl
Michael R. Ransom

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Abstract

Economists and psychologists argue that individuals skew personal beliefs to accord with their own interests. To test for the presence of self-serving beliefs, we surveyed 1,200 members of the Mormon Church about tithing. A tithe is a voluntary contribution equal to 10 percent of income. Since respondents must decide privately what income items to tithe, we observe how the income definition depends on an individual's religious and financial incentives. We find surprisingly little evidence that an individual's financial situation influences beliefs about what counts as income for the tithe. However, ambiguity increases the role for self-serving biases.

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Publisher Info
Article provided by American Economic Association in its journal American Economic Review.

Volume (Year): 89 (1999)
Issue (Month): 4 (September)
Pages: 703-727
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Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:89:y:1999:i:4:p:703-727

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

  1. Lewellen, Wilbur G. & Park, Taewoo & Ro, Byung T., 1996. "Self-serving behavior in managers' discretionary information disclosure decisions," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 227-251, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Matthew Rabin., 1995. "Moral Preferences, Moral Constraints, and Self-Serving Biases," Economics Working Papers 95-241, University of California at Berkeley.
  3. Babcock, Linda & Loewenstein, George, 1997. "Explaining Bargaining Impasse: The Role of Self-Serving Biases," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 109-26, Winter. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Kahneman, Daniel, 1992. "Reference points, anchors, norms, and mixed feelings," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 296-312, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  1. S. Brock Blomberg & Thomas DeLeire & Gregory D. Hess, 2006. "The (After) Life-Cycle Theory of Religious Contributions," CESifo Working Paper Series CESifo Working Paper No. , CESifo Group Munich. [Downloadable!]
  2. Edmund Cannon & Giam Pietro Cipriani, 2003. "Euro-illusion: a natural experiment," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 03/556, Department of Economics, University of Bristol, UK. [Downloadable!]
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  3. Urs Steiner Brandt, 2003. "Unilateral Actions the Case of International Environmental Problems," Working Papers 40/03, University of Southern Denmark, Department of Environmental and Business Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  4. Simon Gaechter & Arno Riedl, 2002. "Moral Property Rights in Bargaining," CESifo Working Paper Series CESifo Working Paper No. , CESifo Group Munich. [Downloadable!]
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