Publications

Article

How to End the Plasma Shortage for Coronavirus Patients

By: Scott Duke Kominers

Those who have recovered from the virus will donate more blood if given the right incentives. View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Convalescent Plasma; Health Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Market Design; Strategy

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January 2013
Supplement

The Great East Japan Earthquake (E): Yamato Transport's Response

By: Hirotaka Takeuchi, Leonard Kosinski, Christina Royce, Anna Stetsovskaya and Evgeny Vasilyev

CEO Kikawa of Yamato Transport gave orders to his managers right after the triple disaster hit the Tohoku region of Japan to do whatever it takes to save lives and not to worry about costs. He also felt that he had to confront the government to make donations to the... View Details

Keywords: Japan; Earthquake; Yamato Transport Company; Natural Disasters; Business and Shareholder Relations; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Transportation Industry; Japan

2016
Working Paper

Gender Differences in Altruism: Responses to a Natural Disaster

By: Matthew Lilley and Robert Slonim

High-profile disasters can cause large spikes in philanthropy and volunteerism. By providing temporary positive shocks to the altruism of donors, these natural experiments help identify heterogeneity in the distributions of the latent altruism which motivates donors.... View Details

Keywords: Altruism; Charitable Behavior; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Gender; Behavior

SSRN

11 Sep 2017
News

Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine Make Record-Breaking $12 Million Gift for Scholarship Aid for First-Generation Students

Research Summary

Unintended Consequences of Fundraising Tactics

Charity fundraisers use a variety of methods to increase donations, with three of the most common being matching funds, seed money, and thank you gifts. Field experiments have shown that matching funds (Eckel and Grossman, 2008) and seed money (List and Lucking-Reiley,... View Details

13 Dec 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Charitable Giving When Altruism and Similarity Are Linked

Keywords: Service

July 2024 (Revised January 2025)
Case

Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors: Bringing Systematic Investment to Philanthropy

By: Lauren Cohen, Hao Gao, Alexander Bischoff and Sophia Pan

Melissa Berman, CEO of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA), evaluated her client’s philanthropy project and its mediocre performance. RPA was a segment of the Rockefeller Family Office’s Philanthropy Department, becoming an independent charity in 2002. Consistently... View Details

December 2017
Case

Charity or Bribery?

By: Eugene Soltes and Brian Tilley

Filip Kowalski, a senior manager at the pharmaceutical company Healthgen, leads sales for the firm’s Polish division. While pitching Healthgen’s products, he develops a relationship with a director of a regional health fund who also runs a private foundation. After a... View Details

Keywords: Bribery; Crime and Corruption; Law; Ethics; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; United States; Europe

2008
Article

Entrepreneurial Ventures and Whole-body Donations: A Regional Perspective from the United States

By: Michel Anteby and Mikell Hyman

Human cadavers are crucial to medical science. While the debate on how to secure sufficient cadavers has focused primarily on donors' behaviors, procuring organizations' roles in increasing donations remain less explored. The United States offers a unique setting in... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Behavior; Programs; Nonprofit Organizations; Business Ventures; Health Testing and Trials; Demand and Consumers; Supply Chain; For-Profit Firms; Organizations; Training; United States

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06 Oct 2020
Video

Black Founders: Kevin Chenault, MBA 2021

March 2018
Case

GoFundMe: The Giving Layer of the Internet

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Allison M. Ciechanover

By 2017, GoFundMe is the world’s largest social fundraising platform. Gross donation volume is growing rapidly, yet the number of monthly campaign starts is relatively flat. The CEO contemplates a variety of growth initiatives. View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Expansion; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Technology Industry

15 Oct 2012
News

Roth shares economics Nobel

Video

Mostafa Terrab

Mostafa Terrab, Chairman and CEO of Morocco-based OCP Group, describes how the company has made targeted donations to smallholder famers in Africa, particularly in response to the decreased availability of fertilizer resulting from the war in Ukraine. View Details

November 2012
Article

An Age Penalty in Racial Preferences

By: Deborah A. Small, Devin G. Pope and Michael I. Norton

We document an age penalty in racial discrimination: charitable behavior toward African American children decreases-and negative stereotypical inferences increase-with the age of those children. Using data from an online charity that solicits donations for school... View Details

Keywords: Stereotyping; Charitable Giving; Prejudice; Prosocial Behavior; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Age; Race; Prejudice and Bias

29 Mar 2011
News

Harvard Business School Receives Papers of Benefactor George Fisher Baker

13 Apr 2015
News

Partners with Purpose

January 10, 2022
Article

The Link Between Income, Income Inequality, and Prosocial Behavior Around the World: A Multiverse Approach

By: Lucia Macchia and Ashley V. Whillans

The questions of whether high-income individuals are more prosocial than low-income individuals and whether income inequality moderates this effect have received extensive attention. We shed new light on this topic by analyzing a large-scale dataset with a... View Details

Keywords: Prosocial Behavior; Income Inequality; Behavior; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Income

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