Are Political and Charitable Giving Substitutes? Evidence from the United States / Pinar Yildirim, Andrei Simonov, Maria Petrova, Ricardo Perez-Truglia.

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Yildirim, Pinar

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TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w26616.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2020.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

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Abstract: We provide evidence that individuals substitute between political contributions and charitable contributions, using micro data from the American Red Cross and Federal Election Commission. First, in a lab experiment, we show that information on the importance of charitable giving increases donations to charities and reduces donations to politics, while information on the importance of political campaigns has the opposite effect. We also show that similar results hold in observational data. We find that foreign natural disasters, which are positive shocks to charitable giving, crowd out political giving. We also find that political advertisement campaigns, which are positive shocks to political giving, crowd out charitable giving. Our evidence suggests that some individuals give to political and charitable causes to satisfy similar needs.

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Item type	Home library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Working Paper	Biblioteca Digital	Colección NBER	nber w26616 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Not For Loan

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January 2020.

We provide evidence that individuals substitute between political contributions and charitable contributions, using micro data from the American Red Cross and Federal Election Commission. First, in a lab experiment, we show that information on the importance of charitable giving increases donations to charities and reduces donations to politics, while information on the importance of political campaigns has the opposite effect. We also show that similar results hold in observational data. We find that foreign natural disasters, which are positive shocks to charitable giving, crowd out political giving. We also find that political advertisement campaigns, which are positive shocks to political giving, crowd out charitable giving. Our evidence suggests that some individuals give to political and charitable causes to satisfy similar needs.