So long as large segments of humanity are suffering chronic poverty and are dying from treatable diseases, organized giving can save or enhance millions of lives. With the law providing little guidance, ethics has a crucial role to play in ensuring that the philanthropic practices of individuals, foundations, NGOs, governments, and international agencies are morally sound and effective. In Giving Well: The Ethics of Philanthropy, an accomplished trio of editors bring together an international group of distinguished philosophers, social scientists, lawyers and practitioners to identify and address the most urgent moral questions arising today in the practice of philanthropy. The topics discussed include the psychology of giving, the reasons for and against a duty to give, the accountability of NGOs and foundations, the questionable marketing practices of some NGOs, the moral priorities that should inform NGO decisions about how to target and design their projects, the good and bad effects of aid, and the charitable tax deduction along with the water's edge policy now limiting its reach. This ground-breaking volume can help bring our practice of charity closer to meeting the vital needs of the millions worldwide who depend on voluntary contributions for their very lives.

A rich collection of current research in the growing field of social economics, covering such issues as culture, gender, ethics, and philanthropic behavior. The growing field of social economics explores how individual behavior is affected by group-level influences, extending the approach of mainstream economics to include broader social motivations and incentives. This book offers a rich and rigorous selection of current work in the field, focusing on some of the most active research areas. Topics covered include culture, gender, ethics, and philanthropic behavior. Social economics grows out of dissatisfaction with a purely individualistic model of human behavior. This book shows how mainstream economics is expanding its domain beyond market and price mechanisms to recognize a role for cultural and social factors. Some chapters, in the tradition of Gary Becker, attempt to extend the economics paradigm to explain other social phenomena; others, following George Akerlof's approach, incorporate sociological and psychological assumptions to explain economic behavior. Loosely organized by theme—Social Preferences; Culture, Values, and Norms; and Networks and Social Interactions”—the chapters address a range of subjects, including gender differences in political decisions, “moral repugnance” as a constraint on markets, charitable giving by the super-rich, value diversity within a country, and the influence of children on their parents' social networks. Contributors Mireia Borrell-Porta, Sjoerd Beugelsdijk, Joan Costa-Font, Elwyn Davies, Julio Jorge Elias, Marcel Fafchamps, Luigi Guiso, Odelia Heizler, Ayal Kimhi, Mariko J. Klasing, Martin Ljunge, Mario Macis, Mark Ottoni-Wilhelm, Abigail Payne, Kelly Ragan, Jana Sadeh, Azusa Sato, Kimberley Scharf, Sarah Smith, Mirco Tonin, Michael Vlassopoulos, Evguenia Winschel, Philipp Zahn

Suggesting that contingency valuation techniques (based on stated preference methods) are useful tools for examining environmental goods and services, Nunes (environmental economics, Free U., The Netherlands) focuses on the modeling of the "warmglow" effect (the pleasure of protecting the environment). He tests whether warmglow is an underlying driving force of individual contingency valuation responses. The goal is to separate warmglow from willingness-to-pay (WTP) mean estimates in order to compute a purer WTP. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The United States is distinctive among Western countries in its reliance on nonprofit institutions to perform major social functions. This reliance is rooted in American history and is fostered by federal tax provisions for charitable giving. In this study, Charles T. Clotfelter demonstrates that changes in tax policy—effected through legislation or inflation—can have a significant impact on the level and composition of giving. Clotfelter focuses on empirical analysis of the effects of tax policy on charitable giving in four major areas: individual contributions, volunteering, corporate giving, and charitable bequests. For each area, discussions of economic theory and relevant tax law precede a review of the data and methodology used in econometric studies of charitable giving. In addition, new econometric analyses are presented, as well as empirical data on the effect of taxes on foundations. While taxes are not the most important determinant of contributions, the results of the analyses presented here suggest that charitable deductions, as well as tax rates and other aspects of the tax system, are significant factors in determining the size and distribution of charitable giving. This work is a model for policy-oriented research efforts, but it also supplies a major (and very timely) addition to the evidence that must inform future proposals for tax reform.

The Handbook on the Economics of Giving, Reciprocity and Altruism provides a comprehensive set of reviews of literature on the economics of nonmarket voluntary transfers. The foundations of the field are reviewed first, with a sequence of chapters that present the hard core of the theoretical and empirical analyses of giving, reciprocity and altruism in economics, examining their relations with the viewpoints of moral philosophy, psychology, sociobiology, sociology and economic anthropology. Secondly, a comprehensive set of applications are considered of all the aspects of society where nonmarket voluntary transfers are significant: family and intergenerational transfers; charity and charitable institutions; the nonprofit economy; interpersonal relations in the workplace; the Welfare State; and international aid.*Every volume contains contributions from leading researchers*Each Handbook presents an accurate, self-contained survey of a particular topic *The series provides comprehensive and accessible surveys

Specially selected from The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics 2nd edition, each article within this compendium covers the fundamental themes within the discipline and is written by a leading practitioner in the field. A handy reference tool.