Two Roads to Altruism: Revelations from Basic Models, Methods, and Data for Characterizing Personal Charitable Giving

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Presenter

Jaron Cordero

Ph.D. Candidate in Economics

Abstract

A simple, additively separable utility model of economic altruism, which allows for differences in self-regarding and other-regarding utilities, is proposed, tested, and supported. Participants in a highly controlled laboratory experiment made personal decisions about charitable donations to individual beneficiaries, who were raising money to meet a basic need on an online donation platform. Individual estimates of economic altruism are reported and show that self and other-regarding utility for money are not identical, like commonly assumed in the literature. Parameter estimates show that participants donate either because they amplify their other-regarding utility with relatively large altruistic concern or the marginal utility of donating was relatively greater than the marginal utility of keeping. Donors may be organized along the Main Sequence of Altruism: a strong, negative relationship between these two motivations.