Inequality and giving / Duquette and Hargaden

This is the dataset and z-Tree code underpinning the experiment in "Inequality and Giving" published in 2021 in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. Dong Yan provided excellent research assistance on the code.<br><br>In a laboratory experiment, we incentivize participants to make donations to a real-world charity. By randomizing the income distribution, we identify a causal effect of inequality on giving behavior. On both the intensive and extensive margins, donations fall when inequality is higher. Our results conflict with theories that predict greater inequality increases charitable giving, but are consistent with other empirical evidence that charitable giving is lower when inequality increases. We present a model where the income distribution directly affects the marginal utility of charitable giving, making a negative inequality-giving relationship possible.<br>