A Theory of Charitable Fund-Raising with Costly Solicitations
研究在募捐有成本时，慈善机构如何选择目标捐赠者以最大化净捐款，发现收入不平等加剧会提高公共品供给水平，为政府拨款非中性提供新解释。
We present a theory of charitable fund-raising in which it is costly to solicit donors. We fully characterize the solicitation strategy that maximizes donations net of fund-raising costs. It is optimal for the fund-raiser to target only the “net contributors”––donors who would give more than their solicitation costs. We show that as the income inequality increases, so does the level of the public good, despite a (potentially) non-monotonic fund-raising strategy. This implies that costly fund-raising can provide a novel explanation for the non-neutrality of income redistributions and government grants often found in empirical studies.