Handbook of Public Economics, Vol. 5

Chapter 1

Charitable Giving

James Andreoni^* and A. Abigail Payne^†,    *University of California, San Diego, USA, ^†McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Abstract

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 of gifts to supply is determined by maximizing a utility function subject to a budget constraint. The second approach is to think of giving as a strategic interaction, with many actors involved. The third and potentially very fruitful ...