There is a large literature investigating the determinants of charitable giving, in particular, price and income elasticities. We find that many of the most often reported results from this literature rely on a model specification that is inappropriate when applied to recent Federal Tax File data. We develop a standard Tobit model with a Box-Cox transformation parameter that nests a number of other specifications. The Box-Cox model yields estimates of price elasticities and expected charitable contributions that differ from those obtained using the typical specification. Additionally, we find that the use of sample weights provides potentially important policy insights.

This article uses a game-theoretic, two-sided matching model and method of simulated moments estimation to study factors affecting the match of elementary teachers to their first jobs. We find that employers demonstrate preferences for teachers having stronger academic achievement (e.g., attended a more selective college) and for teachers living in closer proximity to the school. Teachers show preferences for schools that are closer geographically, are suburban, have a smaller proportion of students in poverty, and, for white teachers, have a smaller proportion of minority students. These results appear predictable but contradict findings from prior research estimating hedonic wage equations for teacher labor markets.

Explaining the Short Careers of High-Achieving Teachers in Schools with Low-Performing Students by Donald Boyd, Hamilton Lankford, Susanna Loeb and James Wyckoff. Published in volume 95, issue 2, pages 166-171 of American Economic Review, May 2005