IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/uwarer/270773.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is charity a homogeneous good?

Author

Listed:
  • Backus, Peter

Abstract

In this paper I estimate income and price elasticities of donations to six different charitable causes to test the assumption that charity is a homogeneous good. In the US, charitable donations can be deducted from taxable income. This has long been recognized as producing a price, or taxprice, of giving equal to one minus the marginal tax rate faced by the donor. A substantial portion of the economic literature on giving has focused on estimating price and income elasticities of giving as the received wisdom suggests that a price elasticity greater than unity is indicative of the ‘treasury efficiency’ of the tax deductibility of charitable contributions, as the loss to tax revenue is less than the increase in giving. However, a major limitation of nearly all the previous attempts to identify such effects has been the implicit assumption that charity is a homogeneous good, meaning giving to one type of charity is a perfect substitute for any other and that the causespecific responsiveness of giving to changes in price and income is equal across those causes. If this assumption is violated, then estimates may be biased and policies designed to increase charitable contributions may be sub-optimal. Results suggest that the tax-price of giving only affects giving to religious organisations and that the income effect is invariant over charitable causes.

Suggested Citation

  • Backus, Peter, 2010. "Is charity a homogeneous good?," Economic Research Papers 270773, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:uwarer:270773
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.270773
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/270773/files/twerp_951.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/270773/files/twerp_951.pdf?subformat=pdfa
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.270773?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cappellari, Lorenzo & Ghinetti, Paolo & Turati, Gilberto, 2011. "On time and money donations," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 853-867.
    2. Becker, Gary S, 1974. "A Theory of Social Interactions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1063-1093, Nov.-Dec..
    3. Deena Ackerman & Gerald Auten, 2008. "Tax Expenditures for Noncash Charitable Contributions," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Analysis of Tax Expenditures, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Gruber, Jonathan, 2004. "Pay or pray? The impact of charitable subsidies on religious attendance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(12), pages 2635-2655, December.
    5. Burton Abrams & Mark Schitz, 1978. "The ‘crowding-out’ effect of governmental transfers on private charitable contributions," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 29-39, March.
    6. Mark Ottoni Wilhelm, 2008. "Practical Considerations for Choosing Between Tobit and SCLS or CLAD Estimators for Censored Regression Models with an Application to Charitable Giving," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 70(4), pages 559-582, August.
    7. Wales, T. J. & Woodland, A. D., 1983. "Estimation of consumer demand systems with binding non-negativity constraints," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 263-285, April.
    8. Kingma, Bruce Robert, 1989. "An Accurate Measurement of the Crowd-Out Effect, Income Effect, and Price Effect for Charitable Contributions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(5), pages 1197-1207, October.
    9. Duncan, Brian, 1999. "Modeling charitable contributions of time and money," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 213-242, May.
    10. James Andreoni & Eleanor Brown & Isaac Rischall, 2003. "Charitable Giving by Married Couples Who Decides and Why Does it Matter?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 38(1).
    11. Reece, William S & Zieschang, Kimberly D, 1985. "Consistent Estimation of the Impact of Tax Deductibility on the Level of Charitable Contributions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(2), pages 271-293, March.
    12. Khanna, Jyoti & Sandler, Todd, 2000. "Partners in giving:: The crowding-in effects of UK government grants," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(8), pages 1543-1556, August.
    13. Slemrod, Joel, 1989. "Are Estimated Tax Elasticities Really Just Tax Evasion Elasticities? The Case of Charitable Contributions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 71(3), pages 517-522, August.
    14. Jonathan Gruber, 2004. "Pay or Pray? The Impact of Charitable Subsidies on Religious Attendance," NBER Working Papers 10374, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. T. S. Breusch & A. R. Pagan, 1980. "The Lagrange Multiplier Test and its Applications to Model Specification in Econometrics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(1), pages 239-253.
    16. Honore, Bo E, 1992. "Trimmed LAD and Least Squares Estimation of Truncated and Censored Regression Models with Fixed Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(3), pages 533-565, May.
    17. Jean-Paul Chavas & Kwansoo Kim, 2004. "A Heteroskedastic Multivariate Tobit Analysis of Price Dynamics in the Presence of Price Floors," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 86(3), pages 576-593.
    18. Bergstrom, Theodore & Blume, Lawrence & Varian, Hal, 1986. "On the private provision of public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 25-49, February.
    19. Andreoni, James, 1989. "Giving with Impure Altruism: Applications to Charity and Ricardian Equivalence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(6), pages 1447-1458, December.
    20. Powell, James L., 1984. "Least absolute deviations estimation for the censored regression model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 303-325, July.
    21. Amemiya, Takeshi, 1974. "Multivariate Regression and Simultaneous Equation Models when the Dependent Variables Are Truncated Normal," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 42(6), pages 999-1012, November.
    22. Jorge Cornick & Thomas L. Cox & Brian W. Gould, 1994. "Fluid Milk Purchases: A Multivariate Tobit Analysis," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 76(1), pages 74-82.
    23. Chamberlain, Gary, 1982. "Multivariate regression models for panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 5-46, January.
    24. Clotfelter, Charles T, 1980. "Tax Incentives and Charitable Giving: Evidence from a Panel of Taxpayers," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 319-340, June.
    25. Boskin, Michael J & Feldstein, Martin S, 1977. "Effects of the Charitable Deduction on Contributions by Low Income and Middle Income Households: Evidence from the National Survey of Philanthropy," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 59(3), pages 351-354, August.
    26. Ribar, David C. & Wilhelm, Mark O., 1995. "Charitable Contributions to International Relief and Development," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 48(2), pages 229-244, June.
    27. David Eaton, 2001. "Charitable contributions and tax price elasticities for nonitemizing taxpayers," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 7(4), pages 431-442, November.
    28. Gabrielle Fack & Camille Landais, 2010. "Are Tax Incentives for Charitable Giving Efficient? Evidence from France," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 117-141, May.
    29. Robinson, Peter M, 1982. "On the Asymptotic Properties of Estimators of Models Containing Limited Dependent Variables," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 27-41, January.
    30. Lankford, R Hamilton & Wyckoff, James H, 1991. "Modeling Charitable Giving Using a Box-Cox Standard Tobit Model," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 73(3), pages 460-470, August.
    31. Clotfelter, Charles T., 1980. "Tax incentives and charitable giving: evidence from a panel of taxpayers," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 319-340, June.
    32. Glenday, Graham & Gupta, Anil K & Pawlak, Henry, 1986. "Tax Incentives for Personal Charitable Contributions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 68(4), pages 688-693, November.
    33. Sabina L. Shaikh & Douglas M. Larson, 2003. "A Two-Constraint Almost Ideal Demand Model of Recreation and Donations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 953-961, November.
    34. Eleanor Brown, 1987. "Tax Incentives and Charitable Giving: Evidence from New Survey Data," Public Finance Review, , vol. 15(4), pages 386-396, October.
    35. Steven T. Yen & Biing-Hwan Lin & David M. Smallwood, 2003. "Quasi- and Simulated-Likelihood Approaches to Censored Demand Systems: Food Consumption by Food Stamp Recipients in the United States," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 85(2), pages 458-478.
    36. Schwartz, Robert A, 1970. "Personal Philanthropic Contributions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 78(6), pages 1264-1291, Nov.-Dec..
    37. Randolph, William C, 1995. "Dynamic Income, Progressive Taxes, and the Timing of Charitable Contributions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(4), pages 709-738, August.
    38. Daniel Feenberg & Elisabeth Coutts, 1993. "An introduction to the TAXSIM model," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(1), pages 189-194.
    39. Duncan, Brian, 2004. "A theory of impact philanthropy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(9-10), pages 2159-2180, August.
    40. Mundlak, Yair, 1978. "On the Pooling of Time Series and Cross Section Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(1), pages 69-85, January.
    41. Eckel, Catherine C. & Grossman, Philip J., 2003. "Rebate versus matching: does how we subsidize charitable contributions matter?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(3-4), pages 681-701, March.
    42. Feldstein, Martin S & Taylor, Amy, 1976. "The Income Tax and Charitable Contributions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 44(6), pages 1201-1222, November.
    43. Mikkel Barslund, 2007. "Estimation of Tobit Type Censored Demand Systems: A Comparison of Estimators," Discussion Papers 07-16, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    44. Gerald E. Auten & Holger Sieg & Charles T. Clotfelter, 2002. "Charitable Giving, Income, and Taxes: An Analysis of Panel Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 371-382, March.
    45. Atkinson, A.B., 2009. "Giving overseas and public policy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(5-6), pages 647-653, June.
    46. David E. Sahn, 2005. "Consistent Estimation of Censored Demand Systems Using Panel Data," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 87(3), pages 660-672.
    47. Ralph Bradley & Steven Holden & Robert Mcclelland, 2005. "A Robust Estimation Of The Effects Of Taxation On Charitable Contributions," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 23(4), pages 545-554, October.
    48. Steven Yen, 2002. "An econometric analysis of household donations in the USA," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(13), pages 837-841.
    49. Jon Bakija & Bradley Heim, 2008. "How Does Charitable Giving Respond to Incentives and Income? Dynamic Panel Estimates Accounting for Predictable Changes in Taxation," NBER Working Papers 14237, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    50. Feldstein, Martin & Clotfelter, Charles, 1976. "Tax incentives and charitable contributions in the United States : A microeconometric analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1-2), pages 1-26.
    51. Wilhelm, Mark O., 2006. "New data on charitable giving in the PSID," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 26-31, July.
    52. Reece, William S, 1979. "Charitable Contributions: New Evidence on Household Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(1), pages 142-151, March.
    53. Auten, Gerald E. & Rudney, Gabriel G., 1986. "Tax reform and individual giving to higher education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 167-178, April.
    54. Brown, Eleanor & Lankford, Hamilton, 1992. "Gifts of money and gifts of time estimating the effects of tax prices and available time," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 321-341, April.
    55. Khanna, Jyoti & Posnett, John & Sandler, Todd, 1995. "Charity donations in the UK: New evidence based on panel data," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 257-272, February.
    56. Hurd, Michael, 1979. "Estimation in truncated samples when there is heteroscedasticity," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2-3), pages 247-258.
    57. Reinstein, David, 2006. "Does One Contribution Come at the Expense of Another? Empirical Evidence on Substitution Between Charitable Donations," Economics Discussion Papers 2938, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    58. Susan Feigenbaum, 1980. "The Case of Income Redistribution: a Theory of Government and Private Provision of Collective Goods," Public Finance Review, , vol. 8(1), pages 3-22, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Duquette, Nicolas J., 2016. "Do tax incentives affect charitable contributions? Evidence from public charities' reported revenues," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 51-69.
    2. Barış K. Yörük, 2013. "The Impact of Charitable Subsidies on Religious Giving and Attendance: Evidence from Panel Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(5), pages 1708-1721, December.
    3. Sara Torregrosa, 2015. "Bypassing progressive taxation: fraud and base erosion in the Spanish income tax (1970-2001)," Working Papers 2015/31, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    4. Bittschi, Benjamin & Borgloh, Sarah & Wigger, Berthold, 2015. "Secularization, tax policy and prosocial behavior," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 113065, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Backus, Peter, 2010. "Is charity a homogeneous good?," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 951, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    2. Peter G. Backus & Nicky L. Grant, 2019. "How sensitive is the average taxpayer to changes in the tax-price of giving?," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 26(2), pages 317-356, April.
    3. Peter Backus & Nicky Grant, 2016. "Consistent Estimation of the Tax-Price Elasticity of Charitable Giving with Survey Data," Economics Discussion Paper Series 1606, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    4. Timm Bönke & Nima Massarrat-Mashhadi & Christian Sielaff, 2013. "Charitable giving in the German welfare state: fiscal incentives and crowding out," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 154(1), pages 39-58, January.
    5. Jonathan Meer & Benjamin A. Priday, 2020. "Tax Prices and Charitable Giving: Projected Changes in Donations under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act," Tax Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(1), pages 113-138.
    6. Jonathan Meer & Benjamin A. Priday, 2019. "Tax Prices and Charitable Giving: Projected Changes in Donations Under the 2017 TCJA," NBER Working Papers 26452, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Reinstein, David, 2006. "Does One Contribution Come at the Expense of Another? Empirical Evidence on Substitution Between Charitable Donations," Economics Discussion Papers 2938, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    8. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:10:y:2002:i:1:p:1-14 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Duquette, Nicolas J., 2016. "Do tax incentives affect charitable contributions? Evidence from public charities' reported revenues," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 51-69.
    10. Brown, Sarah & Greene, William H. & Harris, Mark N. & Taylor, Karl, 2015. "An inverse hyperbolic sine heteroskedastic latent class panel tobit model: An application to modelling charitable donations," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 228-236.
    11. Daniel M. Hungerman & Mark Ottoni-Wilhelm, 2021. "Impure Impact Giving: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(5), pages 1553-1614.
    12. Smith, Vincent H. & Kehoe, Michael R. & Cremer, Mary E., 1995. "The private provision of public goods: Altruism and voluntary giving," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 107-126, September.
    13. Russell N. James & Deanna L. Sharpe, 2007. "The “Sect Effect” in Charitable Giving: Distinctive Realities of Exclusively Religious Charitable Givers," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 66(4), pages 697-726, October.
    14. Steven T Yen & Ernest M Zampelli, 2017. "Charitable Contributions of Time and Money: A Multivariate Sample Selection Approach," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 43(1), pages 43-63, January.
    15. Helms, Sara E. & Thornton, Jeremy P., 2012. "The influence of religiosity on charitable behavior: A COPPS investigation," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 373-383.
    16. Adena, Maja, 2021. "Tax-price elasticity of charitable donations – evidence from the German taxpayer panel," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 219-235.
    17. Chau Do & Irina Paley, 2012. "Altruism from the house: the impact of home equity on charitable giving," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 375-393, September.
    18. Brown, Sarah & Harris, Mark N. & Taylor, Karl, 2012. "Modelling charitable donations to an unexpected natural disaster: Evidence from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 97-110.
    19. Gabrielle Fack & Camille Landais, 2010. "Are Tax Incentives for Charitable Giving Efficient? Evidence from France," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 117-141, May.
    20. William Smith & Cyril Chang, 2002. "Shipping the good apples out: a note on contributions of time and money," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 10(1), pages 1-14.
    21. Naomi E. Feldman, 2010. "Time Is Money: Choosing between Charitable Activities," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 103-130, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Financial Economics;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:uwarer:270773. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/workingpapers/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.