Research
Peer-Reviewed Publications:
Religious aid and development charities are quite numerous in the United States. However, it is unclear what the long-run economic and cultural impacts of religious philanthropy are within the recipient nation's affiliated population. I explore this question through descriptive methods by examining educational outcomes among Protestants in South Korea, following a 50-year effort by Protestant missionaries to establish formalized schools throughout the Korean Peninsula. Using modern data, I find a persistent, positive relationship between identifying as a Protestant and years of education across two datasets following South Koreans in different age cohorts. This relationship holds over the creation of the highly centralized South Korean education system, and the average years of education doubling over age cohorts in my sample. In addition to finding higher levels of education, I find that Korean Protestants are more likely to hold office or professional jobs but do not earn higher household incomes. Further indicating persistence, I find a cultural tie between current Korean Protestants and missionary aid based on the nation to which Korean Protestants feel closest to. Much of the observed economic relationship can be explained through religious attendance; however, the cultural missionary tie appears to be driven by Protestant affiliation.
Examining Donor Preference for Charity Religious Affiliation. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. (2023). vol 52 (3), pp 654-681
In the United States, most charitable donations go to religiously affiliated organizations, yet the impact of a charity’s affiliation on donor behavior is currently unclear. To better understand this impact, this article uses a laboratory experiment to explore how a charity’s religious affiliation drives donor behavior. In the experiment, participants select one charity from a list of eight, with each charity varying in religious affiliation. Masked and unmasked sessions differ in the inclusion of religious affiliation from half the charities, with masked sessions omitting religious affiliation of the charities. This article finds that adding religious language decreases donation frequency and average donation amounts for Christian charities competing against other religious charities. This drop is primarily driven by participants that are politically liberal. Participants prefer charity religious affiliation to match their own religious identity; however, participant strength of religiosity is more predictive in charity choice than religious affiliation.
Coverage: NVSQ Practitioner Blog
Does Additional Mandatory Reporting Alter Charity or Donor Behavior? Examining the 2006 Pension Protection Act. Science of Philanthropy Initiative special issue of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. (2022). vol 200, pp 738-751.
Financial disclosure requirements are common accountability measures placed on publicly funded organizations. However, the impact of financial disclosure requirements on organizational structure or on financial contributors’ behavior is not well understood in the context of nonprofit organizations. I explore this question by analyzing mandatory Form 990-T disclosure included in the Pension Protection Act. This contributes to the understanding of organizational and financial contributor response to mandatory disclosure in an environment already requiring operation data disclosure. I use a difference-in-differences approach, comparing organizations filing a Form 990-T at least once in the three years prior to passage to those who did not. I find that one in four filing organizations create a subsidiary in the following two filing years. Subsidiary tax filings are not subject to disclosure, indicating that nonprofits can restructure their organizations in a manner allowing them to circumvent disclosure requirements. While charities alter their organizational structure, I find no evidence of net changes in donor behavior towards charities, as aggregate total contributions and government grants received do not change.
Book Chapters:
"U.S. Religious Nonprofit Organizations: Economic, Cultural, and Political Impact." (Forthcoming). in V. Maltsev, ed. Religion and Public Policy, Volume 1. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing.
"Religion and Economics: Money, Resources, and Choice." (2022). in B. L. Herling, ed. Bloomsbury Religion in North America. London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Working Papers:
A Further Examination of Entry and Exit in the Nonprofit Sector (with Teresa Harrison). [Revise and Resubmit, Nonprofit Management and Leadership]
We examine whether the patterns of entry and exit established in prior work continue to persist, despite recessions in 2001 and 2008, the introduction of the new Form 990 in 2008, and claims of increased IRS enforcement. We find that charity net entry rates remain positive and consistent over time and sector, are similar to previous findings, and are driven by extremely low exit rates. In analyzing the sector based on Form 990 filing thresholds, we find that charities enter and exit the sector at smaller sizes and that the median charity size is decreasing after the introduction of the Form 990-N. We find 78.23% of all NPs fail to file for at least one year across our entire sample and 35.35% fail to file for at least one interval of three years or longer. The paper emphasizes how this creates an upward bias on exit rates and provides guidance on accounting for this bias when examining entry and exit. We discuss the importance of including the 990-N filers and the implications for policy and future research.
Works In Progress:
Protestant Missions in Korea - Examining Long-Run Impacts of Comity Agreements on Education and Income
What long-run impacts do religious-based development charities have on economic and cultural outcomes? I explore this question by using the differences in education aid by Presbyterian and Methodist missions in 20th century Korea, where Presbyterian missions established 85% of all mission schools and required conversion for attendance. Using variation in an agreement defining boundaries on Presbyterian and Methodist mission operations, I find no differences in educational attainment, household income, or Protestant affiliation across comity agreement borders when looking at the South Korean Population. However, among South Korean Protestants, I find that Protestants living in historically Presbyterian areas earn approximately 300,000 won a month more than Protestant households on the Methodist side of the comity agreement border. The difference in income is not caused by differing levels of education, as I find no difference in Protestant educational attainment across the comity agreement border in either age groups born before compulsory education or those born afterward.
Attracting the Charitable to Charities - Expanding Formal Charitable Giving in Pakistan (with Husnain Ahmad)
Recent data shows that around 97% of Pakistanis report giving some form of charity. However, unlike most countries examined by the literature, most Pakistanis report giving to individuals, as opposed to organizations. We wish to quantify this division in the lab and also determine if there are easily available mechanisms that can encourage more formal giving, i.e. if we can bridge the gap between the charitable and charities through the use of messaging.