An Econometric Analysis of Charitable Giving with Interdependent Preferences.

Many economists and social scientists have conjectured that individual gifts to charity may be interdependent. This paper explores empirically how an individual's charitable contributions may be affected by the giving of others in a 'reference group' of similar individuals. The authors find modest evidence of interdependence of preferences through these reference groups, although the aggregate effects are not large. Hence, they conclude that the inferences from standard models, which ignore interdependence of preferences, are not likely to be misleading. Copyright 1998 by Oxford University Press.