Working Paper: NBER ID: w29331
Authors: Jonathan Meer; Hedieh Tajali
Abstract: Do changes in government spending affect voluntary contributions to those recipients? We examine how changes in K-12 education budgets impact donations to teachers using data from DonorsChoose.org, an online crowdfunding platform for public school teachers to raise money. We find a positive correlation between budgets and voluntary contributions when not accounting for their endogeneous relationship. With instrumental variables, we find evidence for crowd-out of private giving, though the magnitudes are small relative to spending and do not meaningfully offset budget changes. These results are driven entirely by teachers’ posting of requests.
Keywords: charitable giving; education budgets; crowd-out; instrumental variables
JEL Codes: D64; H41; H42; I22
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| k-12 education budgets (H52) | charitable contributions (D64) |
| amount requested by teachers (A29) | charitable contributions (D64) |