Generosity and Wealth: Experimental Evidence from Bogota` Stratification

Blanco, Mariana; Dalton, Patricio

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3481022

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 21 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In line with recent evidence byBlanco and Dalton (2019) income does not seem to affect dictator game contributions as the impact of past revenues on dictator decisions can be precisely (at the 10% level) estimated at zero.…”

supporting

confidence: 86%

Keeping Up With the Joneses: Economic Impacts of Overconfidence in Micro-Entrepreneurs

Seither

2021

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper investigates the effects of incorrect beliefs over relative firm performance on micro-firm outputs through a randomized field experiment in Mozambique. At baseline, 76% of firm owners in the bottom of the distribution are overconfident about their firm's performance. The estimates reveal that correcting these beliefs through a simple, easily scalable information experiment closes the performance gap between treated firms in the bottom of the distribution at baseline and average and top firms by almost 43%. Moreover, the treatment increases the time a firm owner allocates to her business, improves strategic cooperation with the most important business partners, and affects the pricing strategy of treated firm owners. My results suggest that incorrect beliefs about relative performance are a binding constraint to firm growth that have large implications for managerial behavior and firm outcomes. JEL Codes: D22, D91, O12. * This is a substantially revised version of a working paper circulated under the title "Keeping Up with the Joneses: Ranking Effects on Effort, Cooperation, and Firm Performance". I am grateful to Alberto Arlindo, Simon Jacob, Yolanda Mucavele, and Benjamim Portugues, and a large team of enumerators, who were vital in the successful completion of this project in the field. Without their dedication this paper would not have been possible. I wish to thank primarily Catia Batista, Jeremy Magruder, and Kjetil Bjorvatn for detailed comments. I am also grateful for suggestions to

show abstract

supporting

confidence: 86%

Keeping Up With the Joneses: Economic Impacts of Overconfidence in Micro-Entrepreneurs

Seither

2021

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These data from a battery of real-world experiments lend more weight to the hypothesis that relative deprivation is negatively associated with generalized trust and prosociality. Several other studies have reported a similar pattern [34,[52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61]. In experimental settings, exposure to harsh environments has been associated with an increased willingness to defect in a Prisoner's Dilemma game, and a reduced tendency to send money to a partner in a Dictator Game [36,62,63], and experimentally induced financial deprivation can increase the willingness to cheat for financial rewards [64].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 64%

Neighbourhood wealth, not urbanicity, predicts prosociality towards strangers

Zwirner

Raihani

2020

Proc. R. Soc. B.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Urbanization is perhaps the most significant and rapid cause of demographic change in human societies, with more than half the world's population now living in cities. Urban lifestyles have been associated with increased risk for mental disorders, greater stress responses, and lower trust. However, it is not known whether a general tendency towards prosocial behaviour varies across the urban–rural gradient, or whether other factors such as neighbourhood wealth might be more predictive of variation in prosocial behaviour. Here, we present findings from three real-world experiments conducted in 37 different neighbourhoods, in 12 cities and 12 towns and villages across the UK. We measured whether people: (i) posted a lost letter; (ii) returned a dropped item; and (iii) stopped to let someone cross the road in each neighbourhood. We expected to find that people were less willing to help a stranger in more urban locations, with increased diffusion of responsibility and perceived anonymity in cities being measured as variables that might drive this effect. Our data did not support this hypothesis. There was no effect of either urbanicity or population density on people's willingness to help a stranger. Instead, the neighbourhood level of deprivation explained most of the variance in helping behaviour with help being offered less frequently in more deprived neighbourhoods. These findings highlight the importance of socio-economic factors, rather than urbanicity per se , in shaping variation in prosocial behaviour in humans.

show abstract

“…The picture is mixed. Some studies document a U-shaped relationship (Andreoni 2006a) and, in international rankings of generosity, both high-and low-income countries are ranked at the very top (Blanco and Dalton 2019). Other studies, however, find no relationship or a positive relationship with income or wealth (James and Sharpe 2007).…”

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Mahmud and Wahhaj (2018) empirically study voluntary contributions made by credit borrowers to their non-profit microfinance institute in Pakistan and report that clients donate more before they apply for another loan. In a laboratory experiment, Blanco and Dalton (2019) study charitable giving in Bogota by different social strata of individuals and conclude that the rich and poor are equally generous and both the rich and poor are similarly motivated, namely rather by warm-glow than by pure altruism. 3 Matching donations.…”

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Charitable Giving by the Poor: A Field Experiment in Kyrgyzstan

2024

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In a large-scale natural field experiment, we partnered with a microlending company in Kyrgyzstan that asked over 180,000 of its clients for donations to social projects as a form of corporate philanthropy. In a 2 × 2 design, we explored two main (preregistered) hypotheses about giving by the poor. First, based on a conjecture that the poor are more price sensitive than the rich and in contrast to previous studies, we hypothesize that matching incentives induce crowding in of out-of-pocket donations. Second, we hypothesize that our population cares about their proximity to the charitable project. We find evidence in favor of the former hypothesis but not the latter. Previous studies of charitable giving focus on middle- or high-income earners in Western countries, neglecting the poor, although the lowest-income groups are often shown to contribute substantial shares of their income to charitable causes. Our results challenge the evidence in the extant literature but are in line with our theoretical model. The implications for fundraising managers are that the optimal design of fundraising campaigns crucially depends on the targeted groups and that donation matching is successful in stimulating participation in poorer populations. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, behavioral economics and decision analysis. Funding: Financial support was from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [Grant 280092119] and the Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung [Grant 100018_189152]. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4702 .

show abstract

Generosity and Wealth: Experimental Evidence from Bogota` Stratification

Cited by 6 publications

References 21 publications

Keeping Up With the Joneses: Economic Impacts of Overconfidence in Micro-Entrepreneurs

Keeping Up With the Joneses: Economic Impacts of Overconfidence in Micro-Entrepreneurs

Neighbourhood wealth, not urbanicity, predicts prosociality towards strangers

Charitable Giving by the Poor: A Field Experiment in Kyrgyzstan

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About