Sara Helms

How Social Processes Distort Measurement: The Impact of Survey Nonresponse on Estimates of Volunteer Work in the United States1

The authors argue that both the large variability in survey estimates of volunteering and the fact that survey estimates do not show the secular decline common to other social capital measures are caused by the greater propensity of those who do volunteer work to respond to surveys. Analyses of the American Time Use Survey (ATUS)—the sample for which is drawn from the Current Population Survey (CPS)—together with the CPS volunteering supplement show that CPS respondents who become ATUS respondents report much more volunteering in the CPS than those who become ATUS nonrespondents. This difference is replicated within subgroups. Consequently, conventional adjustments for nonresponse cannot correct the bias. Although nonresponse leads to estimates of volunteer activity that are too high, it generally does not affect inferences about the characteristics of volunteers.

Trading the Television for a Textbook?: High School Exit Exams and Student Behavior

Abstract Approximately half of the states in the United States have some form of high school exit exam. One purpose of the exit exams is to create a clear bar which students must pass in order to graduate. Effective exit exams may encourage marginal students to spend additional time on schooling in order to pass the exam. This study exploits state-level variations in timing of implementation to understand how students have responded to the state exit exams. This study uses the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). The ATUS captures, in detail, how individuals spend their day. We find that exit exams are associated with an increase in the amount of time that students spend on educational activities by almost 20 minutes per day in the months in which exams are typically given. The increase comes mainly from an increase in time spent in school and not time spent outside of school on education-related activities. The additional time for education appears to be a trade-off with time spent watching television, which shows a significant drop in exam months for students facing exams.

New experimental evidence on charitable gift restrictions and donor behaviour

Gift restrictions are a common tool used by donors to ensure charitable intent. Owing to increased monitoring costs and the loss of flexibility, gift restrictions are costly to the recipient nonprofit organizations. Using an economic experiment, we studied the impact of offering donors the option to restrict their charitable gift. Our primary finding demonstrates that allowing the option to restrict a charitable gift increases the average gift size, whether or not the donor chooses to exercise that option. This result implies that restricted gifts both are an important tool for increasing donations and may be less costly to the nonprofit organizations than originally believed. We further demonstrate that high levels of religious attendance are associated with an increased use of gift restrictions and an increased responsiveness to those restrictions.

How Do Municipal Bonds Behave Without Tax-Exemption?

This article analyzes an extensive sample of tax-exempt and taxable municipal bonds to better understand how municipals behave without federal tax exemption. The authors find that taxable municipals are issued at higher yields in high state tax jurisdictions and that they are less likely to be issued in these areas and more likely to be issued in those that tax in-state issues. This finding suggests tax premium and market segmentation effects. As state tax treatment becomes more important, these effects may inhibit efficient portfolio diversification outcomes. The authors offer insight into how municipal portfolios and the municipal market behave in the absence of federal tax exemption.

An Evangelical Anomaly: Religious Observance and Intertemporal Choice

Educational achievement is positively correlated with religious devotion. However, those religious sects which are more devoted have, on average, lower levels of education. Evangelical Protestants, for example, have the highest level of religious devotion but the lowest level of educational achievement. Previous research explains this by proposing that education enhances the gains to social interaction while substituting for religious belief. We examine an alternative hypothesis, where religion is a moderator of time preference across potential investments, including: savings, social capital, and human capital. We use the COPPS and wealth supplements of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to observe household investments of time and money for various religious groups. Consistent discounting across a range of investments by the religious would indicate that differences in time preferences, rather than idiosyncratic attitudes toward education, account for differential investments across religious groups. Our results suggest that education is the anomaly, and that Evangelical Protestants do not behave differently than other religious groups in areas of altruism or saving. Instead, we find that differences in the level of devotion to religious activities provides the sharpest differences in investment behavior.

New Evidence on Charitable Gift Restrictions

Gift restrictions are a common tool used by donors to ensure charitable intent. Due to increased monitoring costs and the loss of flexibility, gift restrictions are costly to the recipient nonprofit. Using an economic experiment, we study the impact of offering donors the option to restrict their charitable gift. Our primary finding demonstrates that allowing the option to restrict a charitable gift increases the average gift size, whether or not the donor chooses to exercise that option. This result implies that restricted gifts are both an important tool for increasing donations and may be less costly to the nonprofit than originally thought. We further demonstrate that high levels of religious attendance are associated with an increased use of gift restrictions and an increased responsiveness to those restrictions.