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Is the Supply of Charitable Donations Fixed? Evidence from Deadly Tornadoes

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  • Tatyana Deryugina
  • Benjamin M. Marx

Abstract

Do new societal needs increase charitable giving or simply reallocate a fixed supply of donations? We study this question using IRS datasets and the natural experiment of deadly tornadoes. Among ZIP Codes located more than 20 miles away from a tornado's path, donations by households increase by over $1 million per tornado fatality. We find no negative effects on charities located in these ZIP Codes, with a bootstrapped confidence interval that rejects substitution rates above 16 percent. The results imply that giving to one cause need not come at the expense of another.

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  • Tatyana Deryugina & Benjamin M. Marx, 2020. "Is the Supply of Charitable Donations Fixed? Evidence from Deadly Tornadoes," NBER Working Papers 27078, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27078
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    Cited by:

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    2. Esteban Jaimovich, 2024. "The Intensive Margin of Altruism: Impact of Covid-19 on Charitable Giving in England and Wales," Working Papers 297, Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE).
    3. Perroni, Carlo & Scharf, Kimberley & Talavera, Oleksandr & Vi, Linh, 2022. "Does online salience predict charitable giving? Evidence from SMS text donations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 197(C), pages 134-149.
    4. Paudel, Jayash, 2022. "Deadly tornadoes and racial disparities in energy consumption: Implications for energy poverty," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    5. Falco, Chiara & Corbi, Raphael, 2023. "Natural disasters and preferences for the environment: Evidence from the impressionable years," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    6. Luca Corazzini & Christopher Cotton & Enrico Longo & Tommaso Reggiani, 2021. "The Gates Effect in Public Goods Experiments: How Donations Flow to the Recipients Favored by the Wealthy," MUNI ECON Working Papers 2021-13, Masaryk University, revised Aug 2024.
    7. Black, Nicole & De Gruyter, Elaine & Petrie, Dennis & Smith, Sarah, 2021. "Altruism born of suffering? The impact of an adverse health shock on pro-social behaviour," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 902-915.
    8. Méon, Pierre-Guillaume & Verwimp, Philip, 2022. "Pro-social behavior after a disaster: Evidence from a storm hitting an open-air festival," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 493-510.
    9. Perroni, Carlo & Scharf, Kimberley & Talavera, Oleksandr & Vi, Linh, 2021. "Online Salience and Charitable Giving: Evidence from SMS Donations," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 536, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    10. Julia Cagé & Malka Guillot, 2021. "Is Charitable Giving Political? Evidence from Wealth and Income Tax Returns," Working Papers hal-03877993, HAL.
    11. Luca Corazzini & Christopher Cotton & Enrico Longo & Tommaso Reggiani, 2022. "Pro-Rich and Progressive: Policy Selection and Contributions in Threshold Public Goods Experiments," Working Paper 1471, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    12. Adena, Maja & Hager, Anselm, 2020. "Does online fundraising increase charitable giving? A nation-wide field experiment on Facebook," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economics of Change SP II 2020-302, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    13. Blanco, Esther & Baier, Alexandra & Holzmeister, Felix & Jaber-Lopez, Tarek & Struwe, Natalie, 2022. "Substitution of social sustainability concerns under the Covid-19 pandemic," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    14. Serhan Cevik, 2024. "Good Will Hunting: Do Disasters Make Us More Charitable?," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 25(1), pages 275-287, May.
    15. Benjamin Collier & Sabrina T. Howell & Lea Rendell, 2024. "After the Storm: How Emergency Liquidity Helps Small Businesses Following Natural Disasters," Working Papers 24-20, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    16. Marius A. K. Ring & Thor Olav Thoresen, 2022. "Wealth Taxation and Charitable Giving," CESifo Working Paper Series 9700, CESifo.
    17. Chandrayee Chatterjee & James C. Cox & Michael K. Price & Florian Rundhammer, 2020. "Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: Understanding How State Tax Credits Impact Charitable Giving," NBER Working Papers 27163, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Schwirplies, Claudia, 2023. "Does additional demand for charitable aid increase giving? Evidence from Hurricane Sandy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 209(C), pages 53-73.
    19. repec:ags:aaea22:335942 is not listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • L31 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Nonprofit Institutions; NGOs; Social Entrepreneurship
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

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