American Economic Review 2017

Altruistic Capital

Nava Ashraf^1,2; Oriana Bandiera^1,2

¹ The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn · ² London School of Economics and Political Science

Abstract

To understand altruistic behavior, we must understand the process through which altruism develops and is shaped by the agents' own choices and exogenous factors. We introduce the concept of altruistic capital, which grows with effort devoted to altruistic acts and facilitates future altruism. We illustrate its potential use in the context of banking and conclude by showing that returns to altruistic effort shape the agent's choices and are shaped by external events such as the financial crisis.

DOI

10.1257/aer.p20171097

Sources

openalex

Cite

APA 7 MLA 9 Chicago (author–date) Harvard Elsevier Harvard (JFE, JBF…) The Accounting Review Academy of Management American Marketing Association INFORMS (Management Science) Copy citation Copied ✓