A fundraising mechanism inspired by historical tontines: Theory and experimental evidence

• 成果类型: Article; Proceedings Paper
• 署名作者: Lange, Andreas; List, John A.; Price, Michael K.
• 署名单位: University System of Maryland; University of Maryland College Park; Leibniz Association; Zentrum fur Europaische Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW); University of Chicago; National Bureau of Economic Research; Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE); University of Nevada Reno
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2007.05.001
• 发表日期: 2007
• 页码: 1750-1782
• 关键词: tontines; public goods; Fundraising; lotteries; experiments

摘要

The tontine, which is an interesting mixture of group annuity, group life insurance, and lottery, has a peculiar place in economic history. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it played a major role in raising funds to finance public goods in Europe, but today it is rarely encountered outside of a dusty footnote in actuarial course notes or as a means to thicken the plot of a murder mystery. This study provides a formal model of individual contribution decisions under a modem variant of the historical tontine mechanism that is easily implemented by private charities. Our model incorporates desirable properties of the historical tontine to develop a mechanism to fund the private provision of a public good. The tontine-like mechanism we derive is predicted to outperform not only the voluntary contribution mechanism but also another widely used mechanism: charitable lotteries. Our experimental test of the instrument provides some evidence of the beneficial effects associated with implementing tontine-like schemes. We find that the mechanism has particular power in cases where agents are risk-averse or in situations where substantial asymmetries characterize individual preferences for the public good. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.