Tax Incentives and Charitable Contributions: the Evidence from Censored Quantile Regression.

This paper investigates the relationship between tax price and charitable contributions using the censored quantile regression ( QR) technique, which can provide a complete description of the whole distribution of giving, and data from US Internal Revenue Service individual tax returns. The findings of the present study are as follows. First, the price elasticities of charitable contributions are all negative and consistently decrease in absolute value along the quantiles. Second, donors at lower giving quantiles are price elastic but donors at higher quantiles are price inelastic. Third, the income elasticities are positive and increase along the quantiles. Lastly, the effects of wealth, age, marital status, and the number of dependents vary across quantiles. All the empirical results show that the censored QR offers better explanations on the relationship between tax incentives and charitable contributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Pacific Economic Review is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)