Models of giving have often been based on altruism. Examples include charity and intergenerational transfers. The literatures on both subjects have centered around neutrality hypotheses: charity is subject to complete crowding out, while intergenerational transfers are subject to Ricardian equivalence. This paper formally develops a model of giving in which altruism is not "pure." In particular, people are assumed to get a "warm glow" from giving. Contrary to the previous literature, this model generates identifiable comparative statics results that show that crowding out of charity is incomplete and that government debt will have Keynesian effects.

Private providers of public goods, such as charities, invariably enlist fund‐raisers to organize and collect contributions. Common in charitable fund‐raising is seed money, either from a government grant or from a group of “leadership givers,” that launches the fund drive and generates additional gifts. This paper provides a theoretical basis for fund‐raisers and seeds to charity. The primary assumption is that there is a range of increasing returns at low levels of provision of the public good. It is shown that fund‐raisers have a natural and important role, and that sometimes only a small amount of seed money can grow into a substantial charity.

Models of giving have often been based on altruism. Examples include charity and intergenerational transfers. The literatures on both subjects have centered around neutrality hypotheses: charity is subject to complete crowding out, while intergenerational transfers are subject to Ricardian equivalence. This paper formally develops a model of giving in which altruism is not "pure." In particular, people are assumed to get a "warm glow" from giving. Contrary to the previous literature, this model generates identifiable comparative statics results that show that crowding out of charity is incomplete and that government debt will have Keynesian effects.

If people enjoy giving, then why do they avoid fund-raisers? Partnering with the Salvation Army at Christmastime, we conducted a randomized field experiment placing bell ringers at one or both main entrances to a supermarket, making it easy or difficult to avoid the ask. Additionally, bell ringers either were silent or said “please give.” Making avoidance difficult increased both the rate of giving and donations. Paradoxically, the verbal ask dramatically increased giving but also led to dramatic avoidance. We argue that this illustrates sophisticated awareness of the empathy-altruism link: people avoid empathic stimulation to regulate their giving and guilt.

In settings with uncertainty, tension exists between ex ante and ex post notions of fairness. Subjects in an experiment most commonly select the ex ante fair alternative ex ante and switch to the ex post fair alternative ex post. One potential explanation embraces consequentialism and construes reversals as time inconsistent. Another abandons consequentialism in favor of deontological (rule-based) ethics and thereby avoids the implication that revisions imply inconsistency. We test these explanations by examining contingent planning and the demand for commitment. Our findings suggest that the most common attitude toward fairness involves a time-consistent preference for applying a naive deontological heuristic.