The Impact of State and Local Government Spending on Charitable Giving in the United States
By Lynn Vandendriessche
This paper seeks to further understand how government spending impacts private giving to charitable organizations. It considers giving and spending in the United States in 2008 with a focus on government spending on education, welfare, healthcare, and hospitals. Government spending is looked at at the state and local levels. The results indicate that the impact of government spending depends not only on the category of spending, but also on the income level of the giver. Increased welfare spending is shown to cause incomplete crowding-out across all income groups. Results consistently show education spending to cause crowding-out as well. The impact of both healthcare and hospital spending is more ambiguous, with differing results for different government levels (state and local) and income brackets.
Advisor: Michelle Connolly, Peter Arcidiacon | JEL Codes: L3, L31, L38 | Tagged: Altruism/Philanthropy, and Education, Charitable Giving, Health, Non-profit Institutions, Welfare
Incentives in Professional Tennis: Tournament Theory and Intangible Factors
By Steven Seidel
This paper analyzes the incentives of professional tennis players in a tournament setting, as a proxy for workers in a firm. Previous studies have asserted that workers exert more effort when monetary incentives are increased, and that effort is maximized when marginal pay dispersion varies directly with position in the firm. We test these two tenets of tournament theory using a new data set, and also test whether other “intangible factors,” such as firm pride or loyalty, drive labor effort incentives. To do this, we analyze the factors that incentivize tennis players to exert maximal effort in two different settings, tournaments with monetary incentives (Grand Slams) and tournaments without monetary incentives (the Davis Cup), and compare the results. We find that effort exertion increases with greater monetary incentive, and that certain intangible factors can often have an effect on player incentives.
Advisor: Curtis Taylor, Marjorie McElroy | JEL Codes: J31, J33, L38 | Tagged: Compensation, Sports, Tournament Theory
