IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/pubeco/v95y2011i5p416-427.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Seeds to succeed?

Author

Listed:
  • Bracha, Anat
  • Menietti, Michael
  • Vesterlund, Lise

Abstract

The public phase of a capital campaign is typically launched with the announcement of a large seed donation. Andreoni (1998) argues that such a fundraising strategy may be particularly effective when funds are being raised for projects that have fixed production costs. The reason is that when there are fixed costs of production simultaneous giving may result in both positive and zero provision equilibria. Thus absent announcements donors may get stuck in an equilibrium that fails to provide a desirable public project. Andreoni (1998) demonstrates that such inferior outcomes can be eliminated when the fundraiser initially secures a sufficiently large seed donation. We investigate this model experimentally to determine whether announcements of seed money eliminate the inefficiencies that may result under fixed costs and simultaneous provision. To assess the strength of the theory we examine the effect of announcements in both the presence and absence of fixed costs. Our findings are supportive of the theory for sufficiently high fixed costs.

Suggested Citation

  • Bracha, Anat & Menietti, Michael & Vesterlund, Lise, 2011. "Seeds to succeed?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(5), pages 416-427.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:95:y:2011:i:5:p:416-427
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2010.10.007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272710001507
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2010.10.007?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jan Potters & Martin Sefton & Lise Vesterlund, 2007. "Leading-by-example and signaling in voluntary contribution games: an experimental study," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 33(1), pages 169-182, October.
    2. Becker, Gary S, 1974. "A Theory of Social Interactions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1063-1093, Nov.-Dec..
    3. John A. List & David Lucking-Reiley, 2002. "The Effects of Seed Money and Refunds on Charitable Giving: Experimental Evidence from a University Capital Campaign," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(1), pages 215-233, February.
    4. James Andreoni, 2006. "Leadership Giving in Charitable Fund‐Raising," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 8(1), pages 1-22, January.
    5. Potters, Jan & Sefton, Martin & Vesterlund, Lise, 2005. "After you--endogenous sequencing in voluntary contribution games," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(8), pages 1399-1419, August.
    6. Andreoni, James, 1993. "An Experimental Test of the Public-Goods Crowding-Out Hypothesis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1317-1327, December.
    7. Rachel Croson & Melanie Marks, 2000. "Step Returns in Threshold Public Goods: A Meta- and Experimental Analysis," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 2(3), pages 239-259, March.
    8. Ledyard, John O., "undated". "Public Goods: A Survey of Experimental Research," Working Papers 861, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
    9. Dorsey, Robert E, 1992. "The Voluntary Contributions Mechanism with Real Time Revisions," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 73(3), pages 261-282, April.
    10. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    11. Bruno S. Frey & Stephan Meier, 2004. "Social Comparisons and Pro-social Behavior: Testing "Conditional Cooperation" in a Field Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1717-1722, December.
    12. Mana Komai & Mark Stegeman & Benjamin E. Hermalin, 2007. "Leadership and Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 944-947, June.
    13. James Andreoni & William Harbaugh & Lise Vesterlund, 2003. "The Carrot or the Stick: Rewards, Punishments, and Cooperation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(3), pages 893-902, June.
    14. James Andreoni, 1998. "Toward a Theory of Charitable Fund-Raising," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(6), pages 1186-1213, December.
    15. Ido Erev & Amnon Rapoport, 1990. "Provision of Step-Level Public Goods," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 34(3), pages 401-425, September.
    16. van Dijk, Frans & Sonnemans, Joep & van Winden, Frans, 2002. "Social ties in a public good experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 275-299, August.
    17. Andreoni, James & Brown, Paul M. & Vesterlund, Lise, 2002. "What Makes an Allocation Fair? Some Experimental Evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 1-24, July.
    18. Roberto Weber & Colin Camerer & Marc Knez, 2004. "Timing and Virtual Observability in Ultimatum Bargaining and “Weak Link” Coordination Games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 7(1), pages 25-48, February.
    19. Vesterlund, Lise, 2003. "The informational value of sequential fundraising," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(3-4), pages 627-657, March.
    20. Sefton, Martin & Steinberg, Richard, 1996. "Reward structures in public good experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 263-287, August.
    21. Charness, Gary & Rabin, Matthew, 2005. "Expressed preferences and behavior in experimental games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 151-169, November.
    22. Keser, Claudia, 1996. "Voluntary contributions to a public good when partial contribution is a dominant strategy," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 359-366, March.
    23. Cooper, Russell & Douglas V. DeJong & Robert Forsythe & Thomas W. Ross, 1993. "Forward Induction in the Battle-of-the-Sexes Games," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1303-1316, December.
    24. Rachel Croson & Jen Shang, 2008. "The impact of downward social information on contribution decisions," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 11(3), pages 221-233, September.
    25. Laury, Susan K. & Holt, Charles A., 2008. "Voluntary Provision of Public Goods: Experimental Results with Interior Nash Equilibria," Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, in: Charles R. Plott & Vernon L. Smith (ed.), Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 84, pages 792-801, Elsevier.
    26. Martin, Richard & Randal, John, 2008. "How is donation behaviour affected by the donations of others?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 228-238, July.
    27. Varian, Hal R., 1994. "Sequential contributions to public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 165-186, February.
    28. Gächter, Simon & Nosenzo, Daniele & Renner, Elke & Sefton, Martin, 2010. "Sequential vs. simultaneous contributions to public goods: Experimental evidence," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(7-8), pages 515-522, August.
    29. Bruno Frey & Stephan Meier, 2004. "In a field experiment," Natural Field Experiments 00243, The Field Experiments Website.
    30. Coats, Jennifer C. & Gronberg, Timothy J. & Grosskopf, Brit, 2009. "Simultaneous versus sequential public good provision and the role of refunds -- An experimental study," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1-2), pages 326-335, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Simon Gaechter & Daniele Nosenzo & Elke Renner & Martin Sefton, 2009. "Sequential versus Simultaneous Contributions to Public Goods: Experimental Evidence," CESifo Working Paper Series 2602, CESifo.
    2. Simon Gaechter & Daniele Nosenzo & Elke Renner & Martin Sefton, 2009. "Sequential versus simultaneous contributions to public goods: Experimental evidence," Discussion Papers 2009-07, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    3. Krasteva, Silvana & Saboury, Piruz, 2021. "Informative fundraising: The signaling value of seed money and matching gifts," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    4. Gächter, Simon & Renner, Elke, 2018. "Leaders as role models and ‘belief managers’ in social dilemmas," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 321-334.
    5. Roi Zultan & Eva-Maria Steiger, 2011. "See No Evil: Information Chains and Reciprocity in Teams," Working Papers 1108, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    6. Steiger, Eva-Maria & Zultan, Ro'i, 2014. "See no evil: Information chains and reciprocity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 1-12.
    7. Gregor Schwerhoff, 2016. "The economics of leadership in climate change mitigation," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(2), pages 196-214, March.
    8. Emrah Arbak & Marie-Claire Villeval, 2013. "Voluntary leadership: motivation and influence," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 40(3), pages 635-662, March.
    9. Riyanto, Yohanes E. & Roy, Nilanjan, 2019. "Path of intertemporal cooperation and limits to turn-taking behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 21-36.
    10. Emrah Arbak & Marie Claire Villeval, 2013. "Voluntary Leadership: Selection and Influence," Post-Print halshs-00664830, HAL.
    11. Joseph Deutsch & Gil S. Epstein & Alon Nir, 2017. "Mind the Gap: Crowdfunding and the Role of Seed Money," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(1), pages 53-75, January.
    12. David Klinowski, 2021. "Reluctant donors and their reactions to social information," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(2), pages 515-535, June.
    13. Peter Katuščák & Tomáš Miklánek, 2023. "What drives conditional cooperation in public good games?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(2), pages 435-467, April.
    14. Gächter, Simon & Renner, Elke, 2014. "Leaders as Role Models for the Voluntary Provision of Public Goods," IZA Discussion Papers 8580, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Cagri S. Kumru & Lise Vesterlund, 2010. "The Effect of Status on Charitable Giving," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 12(4), pages 709-735, August.
    16. Drouvelis, Michalis & Marx, Benjamin M., 2022. "Can charitable appeals identify and exploit belief heterogeneity?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 631-649.
    17. Huck, Steffen & Rasul, Imran, 2011. "Matched fundraising: Evidence from a natural field experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(5-6), pages 351-362, June.
    18. Corina Haita-Falah, 2021. "Bygones in a public project," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 57(2), pages 229-256, August.
    19. Gregor Schwerhoff, 2013. "Leadership and International Climate Cooperation," Working Papers 2013.97, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    20. Houser, Daniel & Levy, David M. & Padgitt, Kail & Peart, Sandra J. & Xiao, Erte, 2014. "Raising the price of talk: An experimental analysis of transparent leadership," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 208-218.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:95:y:2011:i:5:p:416-427. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505578 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.