This thesis explores some theoretical and empirical issues in the voluntary contributions to public good. Chapter I contains a brief motivation and introduction. In chapters II and III, we analyze two non-cooperative methods for either enhancing or mitigating externality-causing activities. Chapter II deals with positive externality in the public good contribution context, and chapter III with negative externality in the pollution abatement context. Chapter IV contains an empirical analysis of charitable donations by the elderly. Chapter II models the so-called ``corporate challenge gift'' used in real world fund-raising, and adopts the concept to voluntary contributions to public goods more generally. We model the process as a sequential game in public good contributions. One of the agents sets a quantity-contingent matching scheme to leverage higher contributions from the other players. Under the assumption that the preferences of agents are public information and the assumption that the scheme setter can commit to the matching plan, we show that the scheme brings efficient levels of total contributions to the public good. Chapter III applies some ideas from a joint work with Professor Robin Boadway and Professor Jean-Fran\c{c}ois Tremblay on ``Commitment and Matching Contributions to Public Goods'' to the issue of reducing negative externality-causing activity. In particular, it adapts both the Guttman-Danziger-Schnytzer type of rate-matching mechanism and the quantity-contingent matching method for public good contributions to the international pollution abatement problem. In a simple two-country model, we find that both matching schemes induce the countries to internalize the negative externality imposed on the other country. However, perhaps due to the lack of enough policy instruments, they cannot equate the marginal costs of abatement across the countries, leaving room for Pareto improvement. This further improvement can be achieved if the two countries also contribute to a conventional public~good. Chapter IV is an empirical exercise on some positive externality-generating activities by the elderly. It attempts to document the charitable giving of money and time by people aged 60 or above in the 2003 PSID data for the United States and analyze the influences of some economic and demographic factors on these activities. Income, wealth, the subjective rating of health status, and years in school are found to have statistically significant impacts. Income and wealth appear to have distinct influences. The tax price of money donation also has a statistically significant effect on money donations. / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2007-11-19 01:48:10.777

Cette thèse développe la théorie de l'identité en économie en utilisant les frontières de la firme pour étudier l'effet de l'identification à la firme sur la coopération intrafirme. Nous nous appuyions sur la définition de l'identité personnelle de John B. Davis et proposons un cadre théorique qui conceptualise la relation entre l'identité et la coopération. Dans ce cadre, l'identité personnelle est le produit du management des identités sociales qu'un individu développe et maintient au travers d'effort d'investissement dans ces identités. Nous utilisons les frontières de la firme pour distinguer les identités sociales qui sont liées à l'entreprise de celles qui ne le sont pas. Nous testons les prédictions théoriques avec des expérimentations de terrain dans de vraies firmes et avec leurs employés, et nous contrôlons l'effet des différents degrés d'affiliation à la firme, notamment en étudiant la coopération entre individus de deux firmes appartenant au même groupe. En cohérence avec la théorie, nous trouvons que l'affiliation à la firme a un impact positif et progressif sur la coopération dans un jeu de contributions volontaires. De plus, une plus grande distance sociale entre les individus implique moins de coopération. Notre stratégie théorique et expérimentale permet de surmonter les nombreuses critiques des approches en termes d'identité sociale. Elle rend compte de l'hétérogénéité des stratégies individuelles dans la gestion des identités sociales, l'impact des institutions sur le comportement individuel et la coopération intrafirme. L'identité personnelle ajoute à l'étude traditionnelle de l'identification à la firme les questions de l'individuation et de l'effet des identités sociales multiples. Nous identifions la structure de cette nouvelle approche du lien entre la cognition et la motivation dans la firme. Nous expliquons comment les questions de cette théorie étendue de l'identité sont liées aux questions centrales de la nature de la firme, de l'organisation interne et des frontières de la firme. Nous analysons les implications de l'inclusion de l'analyse de l'individuation et d’identités sociales multiples sur l'analyse de la coopération. Nous étudions également les effets de l'apprentissage et de la culture d'entreprise sur les stratégies identitaires dans la firme / This thesis develops the current theory on identity in economics to study the effect of individuals' identification with the firm on intrafirm cooperation by using the boundaries of the firm. We rely on the definition of personal identity given by John B. Davis to develop a theoretical framework that conceptualizes the relationship between identity and cooperation. In that framework, personal identity is the product of the management of the social identities that an individual develops and maintains through investment efforts in those social identities. We exploit firm boundaries to identify how social identities that are related to the firm can be distinguished from those that are not. We test the theoretical predictions by using framed field experiments involving real firms their employees, and we control the effect of different degrees of firm affiliation, notably by studying cooperation between individuals of two firms which are part of the same corporate group. We find that, consistent with theory, affiliation to firms has a positive and gradual impact on cooperation in voluntary contributions mechanism experiments. In addition, higher social distance among individuals implies less cooperation. Our theoretical and experimental strategy overcomes the numerous critiques of social identity approaches. It accounts for the heterogeneity of individual strategies as regards the management of their social identities, the impact of institutions on individual behavior as well as intrafirm cooperation. Personal identity adds to the traditional study of identification with the firm the questions of individuation and of the effect of multiple social identities. We identify the structure of this new approach to the link between cognition and motivation in the firm. We explain how the questions of this extended theory of identity are related to the central questions of the nature of the firm, of internal organization and of the boundaries of the firm. We analyze the implications of the inclusion of the analysis of individuation and multiple social identities concerning cooperation. We also study the effect of learning and corporate culture on identity strategies.

This research investigates the use of pro-social emotions to improve cooperation. In particular, it tries to reconcile the results from Noussair and Tucker (2007) and Lopez et al. (2010). To reach this goal the experiment considers different degrees of revelation: no revelation, partial and full disclosure of information. Additionally, I use different microeconometric specifications to accommodate different hypothesis about the motivation of the subjects. My results diverge from those of Lopez et al. because I find that revealing the decision of a single subject at random does not significantly increase cooperation, which is the main result of these authors. Also, my findings indicate that cooperation is triggered only when I reveal information of either 3 or all the subjects in the group, the last case being similar to the public observability of Noussair and Tucker. These authors find a non-permanent increase in contributions, so I do but using a positive framed-experiment with disclosure of additional information, the group’s earning loss. Therefore, random revelation together with the disclosure of information about subjects’ decisions appears to be a good alternative to promote cooperation in a sample pool of undergraduate students. Also, I observe a reduction in contributions over time, but in the random revelation treatment this decay by less than 40%. The most interesting result that I obtain is the evidence of altruism and positive reciprocity in the specification of Ashley et al. (2003, 2010), instead of the matching in contributions reported by these authors.

No description available.

Sedan år 1982 har utgångspunkten varit att socialtjänstens verksamhet ska grunda sig i den enskildes integritet och självbestämmanderätt. Den enskilde ska därigenom själv få bestämma huruvida en viss insats från socialtjänsten ska tas emot eller inte. Insatserna ska således grunda sig i frivillighet och utformas tillsammans med den enskilde. Detta gäller även när ett barn har behov av vård. I vissa fall föreligger dock ett behov av tvångsvård, där principen om frivillighet och självbestämmande inte kan upprätthållas på samma sätt som vid socialtjänstens frivilliga insatser. Ett barn ska enligt 1 § andra stycket LVU beredas vård i det fall 2 eller 3 §§ LVU är uppfyllda samt att det kan antas att barnet inte kan ges behövlig vård med samtycke av vårdnadshavarna och barnet självt om det har fyllt 15 år. Av bestämmelsen kan därmed utläsas att ett samtycke dels är en förutsättning för att socialnämnden ska kunna fatta beslut om frivilliga insatser, dels att ett samtycke till frivilliga insatser i regel utgör ett hinder för att det ska kunna fattas beslut om tvångsvård enligt LVU.  I uppsatsen uppmärksammas att det kan finnas viss problematik med ett samtycke till frivilliga insatser. Det kan tänkas förekomma situationer där ett samtycke till frivilliga insatser inte kan anses vara tillräckligt för att ett barn ska kunna ges nödvändiga insatser. Det kan vidare tänkas förekomma situationer där det saknas samtycke till frivilliga insatser, men tvångsvård heller inte kan aktualiseras på grund av att barnets situation inte är tillräckligt allvarlig för att uppfylla kraven i 2 eller 3 §§ LVU. Eftersom problematikerna handlar om just samtycke uppmärksammas även vad ett samtycke till frivilliga insatser har för rättslig innebörd och vad som krävs för det ska kunna betraktas som giltigt. För att utreda vad som gäller i dessa situationer och vilka möjligheter som finns att besluta om tvångsvård eller andra insatser för barnets räkning används den rättsdogmatiska metoden i uppsatsen. Metoden används inledningsvis för att identifiera och beskriva gällande rätt på området. Vidare används den för att analysera och kritisera gällande rätt samt diskutera förslag de lege ferenda. Uppsatsen avslutas därefter genom att den deskriptiva och analytiska delen binds ihop till sammanfattande slutsatser. / Since 1982, the starting point has been that the activities of the social services should be based on the individual's integrity and right to self-determination. The individual must thereby be able to decide for himself whether a certain contribution from the social services is to be received or not. The contributions must thus be based on voluntariness and be designed together with the individual. This also applies when a child needs care. In some cases, however, there is a need for compulsory care, where the principle of voluntariness and self-determination cannot be maintained in the same way as in the social services' voluntary contributions. According to 1 § second part LVU, a child must be provided with care if 2 or 3 §§ LVU are fulfilled, and it can be assumed that the child cannot be given the necessary care with the consent of the guardians and the child himself if he has reached 15 years. It can thus be read from the regulation that a consent is partly a prerequisite for the social welfare board to be able to decide on voluntary contributions, and partly that a consent to voluntary contributions generally constitutes an obstacle to a decision on compulsory care according to LVU.  The essay draws attention to the fact that there may be some problems with a consent to voluntary contributions. There may be situations where a consent to voluntary contributions cannot be considered sufficient for a child to be given the necessary contributions. Furthermore, there may be situations where there is no consent to voluntary contributions, but compulsory care can also not be actualized because the child's situation is not serious enough to meet the requirements of 2 or 3 §§ LVU. Since the problems are specifically about consent, attention is also paid to what a consent to voluntary contributions has for legal meaning and what is required for it to be considered valid. To investigate what applies in these situations and what opportunities there are to decide on compulsory care or other contributions on behalf of the child, the legal dogmatic method is used in the essay. The method is initially used to identify and describe current law in the field. Furthermore, it is used to analyze and criticize current law and discuss proposals de lege ferenda. The essay is then concluded by binding the descriptive and analytical part together into summarized conclusions.

Nous capturons la décision de contribuer volontairement au bien public en groupe restreint et important, en nous basant sur un classique de l’économie expérimentale. Contrairement aux prévisions, la décision dépend négativement du rendement du bien public en groupe important. Les joueurs percevraient l’enjeu comme faible. La décision dépend positivement, mais trop fragilement, du nombre de bénéficiaires du bien public en groupe restreint et n’en dépend pas en groupe important. La décision dépend toujours négativement de l’avancement du jeu, mais sans convergence vers la stratégie dominante. Le mode de calcul de la rémunération aurait une incidence. La réciprocité et l’aversion à l’iniquité sont toujours absentes. Cela serait lié au fait que les joueurs ne sont pas représentatifs de la population. Dans le sens des prévisions, deux propriétés de l’investissement public se dégagent et concordent avec les décisions observées dans la vie courante. La décision dépend positivement du rendement public en groupe restreint, dans la logique de cet incitatif à contribuer. L’altruisme est présent sous forme de traces en groupe restreint et disparaît en groupe important, désavantagé par la dilution du don. L’éclat chaleureux du don voit sa présence s’accroître en groupe important, favorisé par le changement de nature du don. Nous modélisons ces résultats en nous basant sur l’équilibre Logit. Il s’agit de fonctions de réponse perturbées comprenant différents composants. Les propriétés de ces fonctions rencontrent adéquatement la prise de décision et ont l’avantage de ne pas représenter certains errements empiriques. / We capture decision-making to voluntarily contribute to public good in small and large group, based on a Classic in experimental economics. Contrary to forecasts, decision-making is negatively correlated with Marginal Per Capita Return to investing in the public group in large group. Subjects appear to view the issue as weak. Decision-making is positively correlated, but too weakly, with number of subjects in small group and is not correlated in large group. Decision-making is always negatively correlated with game process, but without convergence to the dominant strategy. The method used in calculating compensation can have an impact. Reciprocity and aversion to inequity are always missing. This can be linked to the fact that subjects are not representative of the true population. In line with forecasts, two properties of public investment emerge and are consistent with decision-making of everyday life. Decision-making is negatively correlated with Marginal per Capita Return in small group, following logic of this incentive to contribute. There are signs of altruism in small group disappearing in larger group, disadvantaged by dilution of Giving. Presence of Warm-Glow Giving increases in large group, supported by changing nature of Giving. We model these results using the Logit equilibrium. It is noisy response functions including different components. Function’s properties properly meet decision-making and have advantage of not modeling some empirical contradictions.