
James AndreoniUniversity of California, San Diego | UCSD · Department of Economics
James Andreoni
PhD
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152
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Introduction
Additional affiliations
January 2006 - present
August 1992 - December 2005
August 1986 - August 1992
Education
September 1981 - August 1986
Publications
Publications (152)
Does higher socioeconomic status predict decreased prosocial behavior? Methodological issues such as the reliance of survey studies on self-reported measures of prosociality, the insufficient control of relative incentives in experiments, and the use of non-random samples, have prevented researchers from ruling out that there is a negative associat...
We usually assume purchasers of commodities experience utility at the point of transacting a purchase, when money and ownership are exchanged. With charitable giving, the social rewards from giving can begin being enjoyed the moment a decision to give has been made. Later, when the gift is transacted, the donor can again experience utility from giv...
Significance
Social tipping—instances of sudden change that upend social order—is rarely anticipated and usually understood only in hindsight. The ability to predict when societies will reach a tipping point has significant implications for welfare, especially when social norms are detrimental. In a large-scale laboratory experiment, we identify a...
What is the value of pledges if they are often reneged upon? In this paper, we show—both theoretically and experimentally—that pledges can be used to screen donors and to better understand their motives for giving. In return, nonprofit managers can use the information they glean from pledges to better target future charitable giving appeals and int...
Time preferences have been correlated with a range of life outcomes, yet little is known about their early development. We conduct a field experiment to elicit time preferences of over 1200 children ages 3–12, who make several intertemporal decisions. To shed light on how such primitives form, we explore various channels that might affect time pref...
We conduct experiments eliciting risk preferences with over 1,400 children and adolescents aged 3–15 years old. We complement our data with an assessment of cognitive and executive function skills. First, we find that adolescent girls display significantly greater risk aversion than adolescent boys. This pattern is not observed among young children...
We present a novel experiment demonstrating strategies selfish individuals utilize to avoid social pressure to be altruistic. Subjects participate in a trust game, after which they have an opportunity to state their beliefs about their opponent's actions. Subsequently, subjects participate in a task designed to “reveal” their true beliefs. Subjects...
The fear of moral hazard-especially in the age of internet commerce- can depress or prevent profitable trades. Experiments show, however, that many people prefer honesty to deceit and would not succumb to moral hazard. This paper asks whether we can find a simple, voluntary institution that can empower moral traders, drive out amoral ones, reduce m...
Experts bring economic tools to bear on philanthropic activities, addressing topics that range from the determinants of giving to the effectiveness of fundraising techniques.
Economists are increasingly aware of the need to better understand philanthropic activities. In this book, economists address a variety of topics related to the economics of p...
We report experimental results for a twice‐played prisoners' dilemma in which the players can choose the allocation of the stakes across the two periods. Our point of departure is the assumption that some (but not all) people are willing to cooperate, as long as their opponent is sufficiently likely to do so. The presence of such types can be explo...
Forthcoming, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics
Recent debate has identified important gaps in the understanding of intertemporal risks. Critical to closing these gaps is evidence on which dimension of intertemporal risk – the risk or the time – is evaluated first. Though under discounted expected utility this ordering is of no consequence, under discounted non-expected utility models the order...
Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) are now a major source of charitable donations in the US, responsible for 1 in 10 dollars donated to charity in 2015. In 2016, Fidelity Charitable, whose only mission is to provide DAFS, became the largest charity in the US. Paradoxically, most people have never heard of DAFs or Fidelity Charitable. This leads us to ask,...
Time preferences have been correlated with a range of life outcomes, yet little is known about their early development. We conduct a field experiment to elicit time preferences of nearly 1,000 children ages 3-12, who make several inter temporal decisions. To shed light on how such primitives form, we explore various channels that might affect time...
We model contests with a fixed proportion of prizes, such as a grading curve, as all-pay auctions where higher effort weakly increases the likelihood of a prize. We find theoretical predictions for the heterogeneous effect auction size has on effort from high- and low-types. We test our predictions in a laboratory experiment that compares behavior...
How do people think about fairness in settings with uncertainty? One view holds that fairness requires equality of opportunity; another holds that it requires equality of outcomes. Relative to the resolution of uncertainty, the first view takes an ex ante perspective, while the second takes an ex post perspective. In this paper, we conduct a labora...
We use structural estimates of time preferences to customize incentives for polio vaccinators in Lahore, Pakistan. We measure time preferences using intertemporal allocations of effort, and derive the mapping between these structural estimates and individually optimized incentives. We evaluate the effect of matching contract terms to discounting pa...
If people get joy from giving, then why might they avoid fundraisers? We explore this in a randomized natural field experiment during the Salvation Army's annual campaign. The familiar bell-ringers were placed at one or both of two main entrances to a supermarket, making the ask for a charitable donation either easy or difficult to avoid. Additiona...
Philanthropy is defined as a benevolent behavior toward others in the society, usually in the form of charitable gifts. Charitable giving accounts for a significant fraction of income in the US and other nations and is often directly encouraged through government tax policy. This article discusses the motives, causes, and influences of philanthropi...
If being asked to give to charity stimulates an emotional response, like empathy, that makes giving difficult to resist, a natural self-control mechanism might be to avoid being asked in the first place. We replicate a result from a field experiment that points to the role of empathy in giving. We conduct an experiment in a large superstore in whic...
Previous laboratory and field experiments suggest increased levels of generosity when donor identities are revealed. We add to this by studying a unique natural field experiment. We explore a panel of religious donors tracking 1,597 households over 335 weeks from 1994-2000 in Zagreb, Croatia. Donations were solicited at each Sunday mass for a fundr...
When public goods can only be provided when donations cross a minimum threshold, this creates an advantage in that Pareto Efficient outcomes can be Nash Equilibria. Despite this, experiments have shown that groups struggle to coordinate on one of the many efficient equilibria. We apply a mechanism used successfully in continuous public goods games,...
This Chapter summarizes the overall facts about charitable giving. Charitable giving has remained an active and important area within Public Economics. Then also discusses about the four main approaches one could take to research on charitable giving. The first approach is to look at giving as a simple individual economic decision, where a quantity...
This paper compares two methods to encourage socially optimal provision of a public good. We compare the efficacy of vigilante justice, as represented by peer-to-peer punishment, to delegated policing, as represented by the “hired gun” mechanism, to deter free riding and improve group welfare. Small self-governing organizations often place enforcem...
Risk and time are intertwined. The present is known while the future is inherently risky. This is problematic when studying time preferences since uncontrolled risk can generate apparently present-biased behavior. We systematically manipulate risk in an intertemporal choice experiment. Discounted expected utility performs well with risk, but when c...
People often see the same evidence but draw opposite conclusions, becoming polarized over time. More surprisingly, disagreements persist even when they are commonly known. We derive a model and present an experiment showing that opinions can diverge when one-dimensional opinions are formed from two-dimensional information. When subjects are given s...
What triggers giving? We explore this in a randomized natural field experiment during the Salvation Army's annual campaign. Solicitors were at one or both of two main entrances to a supermarket, making the solicitation either easy or difficult to avoid. Additionally, solicitors were either silent, or asked "please give" to passersby. We observed ov...
Using data from charitable organizations in the US, authors have established that government grants to charities largely crowd out giving from other sources, but that this reduction is due mostly to reduced fundraising activities of the charity itself. We use much more detailed data from over 6000 charities in Canada, measured for up to 15 years, t...
We explore the effects of local ethnic and religious diversity on individual donations to private charities. Using 10-year neighborhood-level panels derived from personal tax records in Canada, we find that diversity has a detrimental effect on charitable donations. A 10 percentage point increase in ethnic diversity reduces donations by 14%, and a...
There is convincing experimental evidence that Expected Utility fails, but when does it fail, how severely, and for what fraction of subjects? We explore these questions using a novel measure we call the uncertainty equivalent. We find
Expected Utility performs well away from certainty, but fails near certainty for
about 40% of subjects. Comparing...
We present and experimentally test a mechanism that provides a simple, natural, low cost, and realistic solution to the problem of compliance with socially determined efficient actions, such as contributing to a public good. We note that small self-governing organizations often place enforcement in the hands of an appointed leader–the department ch...
This paper compares two methods to encourage socially optimal provision of a public good. We compare the efficacy of vigilante justice, as represented by peer-to-peer punishment, to delegated policing, as represented by the “hired gun” mechanism, to deter free riding and improve group welfare. The “hired gun” mechanism (Andreoni and Gee, 2011) is a...
This paper analyzes the e¤ects of a legislative provision that grants a one-day paid leave of absence to blood donors who are employees in Italy, using a unique dataset with the complete donation histories of the blood donors in an Italian town. The across-donor variation in job market status, and within-donor job switching over time are the source...
When the government gives a grant to a private charitable organization, do the donors to that organization give less? If they do, is it because the grants crowd out donors who feel they gave through taxes (classic crowd out), or is it because the grant crowds out the fundraising of the charities who, after getting the grant, reduce efforts of fundr...
To understand the "pure" incentives of altruism, economic laboratory research on humans almost always forbids communication between subjects. In reality, however, altruism usually requires interaction between givers and receivers, which clearly must influence choices. Charities, for example, speak of the "power of asking." Indeed, evolutionary theo...
In the study of decision making under risk, preferences are assumed to be continuous. We present a model of discontinuous preferences over certain and uncertain outcomes. Using existing parameter estimates for certain and uncertain utility, five important decision theory phenomena are discussed: the certainty effect, experimentally observed probabi...
Risk and time are intertwined. The present is known while the future is inherently risky. Discounted expected utility provides a simple, coherent struc-ture for analyzing decisions in intertemporal, uncertain environments. Critical to such analysis is the notion that certain and uncertain utility are functionally interchangeable. We document an imp...
Unlike experiments on markets or mechanisms, experiments on altruism are about an individual motive or intention. This raises serious obstacles for research. How do we define an altruistic act, and how do we know altruism when we see it?
Experimentally elicited discount rates are frequently higher than what one would infer from market interest rates and seem unreasonable for economic decision-making. Such high rates have often been attributed to present bias and hyperbolic discounting. A commonly recognized bias of standard elicitation techniques is the use of linear preferences fo...
Risk and time are intertwined. The present is known while the future is inherently risky. Discounted expected utility provides a simple, coherent structure for analyzing decisions in intertemporal, uncertain environments. However, we document robust violations of discounted expected utility, inconsistent with both prospect theory probability weight...
A norm of 50-50 division appears to have considerable force in a wide range of economic environments, both in the real world and in the laboratory. Even in settings where one party unilaterally determines the allocation of a prize (the dictator game), many subjects voluntarily cede exactly half to another individual. The hypothesis that people care...
Experimental work on preferences over risk has typically considered choices over a small number of discrete options, some of which involve no risk. Such experiments often demonstrate contradictions of standard expected utility theory. We reconsider this literature with a new preference elicitation device that allows a continuous choice space over o...
We consider two common modes of judicial resolution: judicial discretion, where the judge or jury has broad discretion in fashioning a remedy, and winner take all where the remedy is pre-determined by the governing substantive law. We analyze these systems in light of the fact that pre-trial bargainers have been shown to have excessive confidence i...
The existence of a beauty premium in the labor market and the male–female wage gap suggests that appearance can matter in the real world. We explore beauty and gender in a public goods experiment and find similar effects. We find a beauty premium, even though beautiful people contribute, on average, no more or less than others. The beauty premium,...
When the government gives a grant to a private charitable organization, do the donors to that organization give less? If they do, is it because the grants crowd out donors who feel they gave through taxes (classic crowd out), or is it because the grant crowds out the fundraising of the charities who, after getting the grant, reduce efforts of fundr...
Charitable giving is a significant vehicle for providing needed goods and services around the world. In the United States, for example, charitable giving accounts for nearly two per cent of income. Moreover, the tax deduction for charitable giving is one of the oldest and most widely used tax policies in the US tax code. This article describes the...
We call an act altruistic when it is a sacrifice that benefits others. We discuss how experiments have demonstrated that altruistic choices appear to follow the same regularity conditions as those assumed for private goods. In particular they vary rationally in response to changes in prices and circumstances. We show how experiments have distinguis...
When a single gift goes to a group of recipients, how does giving depend on the size of the group? This question is important for understanding charitable giving and fund-raising, public goods provision, family altruism, and more. If we think of the gift as giving up a dollar to create a social surplus, then we want to know how the number of recipi...
We consider two common modes of judicial resolution: judicial discretion, where the judge or jury has broad discretion in fashioning a remedy, and winner take all where the remedy is predetermined by the governing substantive law. We analyze these systems in light of the fact that pre-trial bargainers have been shown to have excessive con…dence in...
Corruption in the public sector erodes tax compliance and leads to higher tax evasion. Moreover, corrupt public officials abuse their public power to extort bribes from the private agents. In both types of interaction with the public sector, the private agents are bound to face uncertainty with respect to their disposable incomes. To analyse effect...
Philanthropy is one of the enduring areas of economic research. Why would people work hard only to give their earnings away? The paper explores the theoretical foundations, as well as the empirical and policy research on philanthropy. This paper reviews over 25 years worth of economic research, and points to the many challenging new questions that...
This paper studies experimentally how information about rivals' types affects bidding behavior in first- and second-price auctions. The comparative static hypotheses associated with information about rivals enables us to test the relevance of such information as well as the general predictions of the auction theory, by providing an effective means...
Revealed preference tests are elegant nonparametric tools that ask whether individual or aggregate data conform to economic models of optimizing be- havior. In designing a test using revealed preference, however, one faces a vexing tension between goodness-of-fit and power. If the test finds vio- lations, then one must ask if the test was too deman...
Experiments have shown that people have a natural taste for cooperation. This paper takes a first step in understanding how formal and informal institutions might be designed to utilize these private tastes to facilitate more efficient economic interactions. We examine a twice-played prisoners’ dilemma in which the total of the stakes in the two pe...
Why do charities often begin new capital fund drives by announcing a large contribution by a single wealthy donor? This paper explores the possibility that such "leadership giving" provides a signal to all other givers that the charity is of high quality. The dilemma is that if the lead giver can deceive others to believe the charity is of higher q...
We present an experiment designed to separate the two commonplace explanations for behavior in ultimatum games—subjects’ concern for fairness versus the failure of subgame perfection as an equilibrium refinement. We employ a tournament structure of the bargaining interaction to eliminate the potential for fairness to influence behavior. Compari...
This study explores the ways in which information about other individual's action affects one's own behavior in a dictator game. The experimental design discriminates behaviorally between three possible effects of recipient's within-game reputation on the dictator's decision: Reputation causing indirect reciprocity, social influence, and identifica...
This study explores the ways in which information about other individual's action affects one's own behavior in a dictator game. The experimental design discriminates behaviorally between three possible effects of recipient's within-game reputation on the dictator's decision: Reputation causing indirect reciprocity, social influence, and identifica...
This paper evaluates a pilot program run by a company called OPOWER, previously known as Positive Energy, to mail home energy reports to residential utility consumers. The reports compare a household’s energy use to that of its neighbors and provide energy conservation tips. Using data from randomized natural field experiment at 80,000 treatment an...
The ultimatum game has been the primary tool for studying bargain- ing behavior in recent years. However, not enough information is gathered in the ultimatum game to get a clear picture of responders' utility functions. We analyze a convex ultimatum game in which responders' can "shrink" an oer as well as to accept or reject it. This allows us to o...
This study explores the ways in which information about other individual's action affects one's own behavior in a dictator game. The experimental design discriminates behaviorally between three possible effects of recipient's within-game reputation on the dictator's decision: Reputation causing indirect reciprocity, social influence, and identifica...
We use a laboratory experiment to study the extent to which investors’ choices are affected by limited loss deduction in income taxation. We first compare investment behavior in the no tax baseline to a tax control setting, in which the income from investments is taxed. We find that investors significantly reduce their risk-taking as predicted by t...