Does Altruism Mitigate Free-riding and Welfare Loss?
) (University of Alabama) Abstract A warm-glow motivation for charitable giving has recently been explored as a possible solution to the problem of inefficient private provision of public goods. However, the introduction of warm-glow affects both the efficient level of public good provision as well as the equilibrium level. Hence it is not clear whether warm-glow mitigates or exacerbates inefficiency. We revisit Andreoni’s (1989) model of impure altruism and formally analyze this question. Cornes and Sandler”s (1986) index of easy riding and a version of Debreu”s (1951) coefficient of resource utilization are used as measures of free-riding and welfare loss. Download InfoTo download: If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. Information about this may be contained in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the
