Auctions for risk-averse non-profits

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Carpenter, Jeffrey; Foster, Joshua; Matthews, Peter Hans
• 署名单位: Middlebury College; IZA Institute Labor Economics; Western University (University of Western Ontario); Aalto University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105452
• 发表日期: 2025
• 关键词: Auctions; Charitable giving; Risk-return trade-off; experiments

摘要

Fundraising for non-profit organizations (NPOs) often involves converting in-kind donations into cash, commonly through charity auctions. However, little attention has been paid to the revenue distributions these mechanisms generate, an obvious concern for risk-averse NPOs deciding on a fundraising strategy. This paper introduces a theoretical framework that evaluates the first two moments of the revenue distributions accruing to ten auction formats under conditions that permit endogenous bidder participation. The resulting revenue frontier generated by these mechanisms reveals a robust and sizeable mean-variance tradeoff that NPOs should consider when selecting which mechanism(s) to employ. We test the model's predictions for each auction format using both laboratory and field experiments and find evidence of a substantial (and similar) tradeoff in each setting. Additionally, we show how bidder participation can modulate an NPO's risk exposure, conditional on the auction formats selected. These results offer important insights into how NPOs might optimize their fundraising strategies through methods of mechanism diversification.