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RESEARCH

JOB MARKET PAPER

Why Give if Others Will? Evidence of Crowd-Out in a Crowdfunding Platform (with Piruz Saboury

The increasing use of dynamic fundraising schemes such as crowdfunding has given rise to a relatively small but growing body of literature focusing on understanding the effectiveness of such techniques. In this paper, we first present a simple model of dynamic fundraising as a sequential-move threshold public goods game. We demonstrate that donors have an incentive to free-ride on expected future contributions, which leads to the following testable hypotheses for our empirical analysis: Donations are, all else equal, decreasing in accumulated past donations and increasing in time from the beginning of fundraising. We analyze a rich dataset from a prominent crowdfunding platform and find evidence that supports our hypotheses and shows the presence of a small but statistically significant forward-looking crowd-out among donors. On average, a one-percentage-point increase in past cumulative donations leads to a reduction of 0.05 percentage points in the amount contributed, while a one-percentage-point increase in time passed results in an increase of 0.03 percentage points in the amount contributed. In short, we observe that an increased prospect of future provision crowds out earlier contributions.

 

Old Title: How Do Late Donors Learn from Early Donors in Crowdfunding?

PUBLICATIONS

WORKING PAPERS

The Effect of Teacher Strikes on Support for Schools

Opinion polls suggest that the public supports teacher strikes. I examine the impact of teacher strikes on voluntary financial support for schools as a revealed-preference measure of support. I use data from DonorsChoose.org, an online crowdfunding platform for school teachers to fund their classroom projects, combined with teacher strikes' timing and locations across the United States. Variation in the timing of the strikes across school districts does not affect overall private contributions. I do not find any changes in fundraising activities
around the strikes.

WORKS IN PROGRESS

Immigration, Cultural Distance, and Voting Behavior: Evidence from the United Kingdom

Improving Visitor Experience through Analysis of Visitor Foot Traffic and Donations (with Tatiana Kornienko)

The Effect of COVID-19 Closures on Support for Education (with Benjamin Hansen and Jonathan Meer)

Can Nonprofits Help Buffer the Negative Impacts of Poverty?

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