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Full-Text Articles in Law
Charity And Information: Correcting The Failure Of A Disjunctive Social Norm, Brian Broughman, Robert Cooter
Charity And Information: Correcting The Failure Of A Disjunctive Social Norm, Brian Broughman, Robert Cooter
Articles by Maurer Faculty
Charitable donations fund social goods that the state and markets undersupply. Despite widespread belief in the importance of private charity, most Americans donate little or nothing. Experiments in behavioral economics show that anonymity, not human nature, causes low contributions. Anonymity poses a particular challenge for charity because of the special character of the obligation. Charity is a disjunctive social norm, meaning the obligation is owed to ‘A or B or C or …’. Disclosure of each individual’s aggregate conduct is necessary for the effectiveness of any disjunctive social norm. To revitalize charity we propose a public registry where each taxpayer …
Charity, Publicity, And The Donation Registry, Brian Broughman, Robert Cooter
Charity, Publicity, And The Donation Registry, Brian Broughman, Robert Cooter
Articles by Maurer Faculty
Many Americans donate little or nothing to charity, but according to Robert Cooter and Brian Broughman, our social environment is the cause, not human nature. They propose a small policy change to increase transparency and elicit generosity inspired by experimental evidence about the nature of giving.