Group size and the free-rider hypothesis: An examination of new evidence from churches

Lipford, Jody W.

doi:10.1007/bf01047748

Cited by 34 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…This is an important topic; data summarized in Ronsvalle and Ronsvalle [2000] show that over half of all charitable giving in the United States goes to religious organizations. A small amount of economic research focuses on giving to churches and religious organizations; examples include Clain and Zech [1999], Lipford [1995], Sullivan [1985] and Gruber [2004].…”

Section: Iia Giving To Churchesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are church and state substitutes? Evidence from the 1996 welfare reform

Hungerman

2005

Journal of Public Economics

165

118

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Churches provide community services similar to those provided by the government, but there has been no convincing analysis of the extent to which church activity can substitute for government activity. To address this important issue, this paper uses a new panel data set of Presbyterian Church (USA) congregations to regress both church-member donations and a church's community spending on a number of variables, including government welfare expenditures. A provision of the 1996 welfare law that decreased the availability and use of welfare services by non-citizens serves as an instrument to identify the causal effect of government spending on church activity. The results show that church activities substitute for government activities. Extrapolating the findings to all denominations, the estimated "crowd-out" effect lies between twenty and thirty-eight cents on the dollar. The results are subjected to a number of robustness tests.

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Section: Iia Giving To Churchesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are church and state substitutes? Evidence from the 1996 welfare reform

Hungerman

2005

Journal of Public Economics

165

118

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“…Consistent with this theory, many empirical studies have found that per capita financial support is lower in larger congregations (Iannaccone 1998: 1483–1484; Zaleski and Zech, 1992). However, Lipford's (1995) study found that per member contributions do not decline with increased congregational membership. Also contrary to the free rider hypothesis, Forbes and Zampelli (1997: 27) found that religious giving was not significantly less for individuals who agreed with the statement that “individuals can do little to alleviate suffering in the world.” Although the relationship between group size and free riding behavior is not involved in the analysis of the present study, other aspects of the free rider problem are addressed in Section IV below.…”

Section: The Economics Of Religionmentioning

confidence: 72%

The Pelagian Controversy: An Economic Analysis

Beck

2007

American J Econ Sociol

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. In recent years economic theory has been used to analyze the introduction of new religious doctrines as innovations that further the objectives of religious organizations and their leaders. The present study analyzes the decision of church authorities in the early fifth century to reject the doctrine advanced by Pelagius in favor of the position taken by Augustine. Accounts of the controversy reveal two self‐interested motives for the church hierarchy to reject the Pelagian doctrine: (1) the Pelagian view would have undermined the authority of the church hierarchy; and (2) by making greater demands for moral conduct, it would have raised the “cost” of being a Christian and thereby discouraged growth in church membership, particularly among the Roman upper class.

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“…This phenomenon is not only intuitively appealling, but has been empirically supported by many researchers using a variety of techniques and datasets (see, for example, Cieskak, 1984;Hilke, 1980;Olson and Caddell, 1994;Sullivan, 1985;and Zaleski and Zech, 1992). A recent paper by Jody Lipford (1995) appearing in this journal is quite unsettling since it finds no evidence of free ridership. This paper proceeds as follows.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

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This paper comments on a recent study by Lipford (1995) which rejects the hypothesis of free ridership. This paper contends that Lipford's analysis suffers from two serious misspecification errors.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%