Re: charity and time preference

2003-06-07 Thread Wei Dai
I'm surprised that everyone who has responded to my post has defended the conventional wisdom on charity giving. But surely one should either borrow money to do a life time worth of giving right away, or save and do all charity in one's will, or otherwise concentrate all charity giving to a single

Re: charity and time preference

2003-06-07 Thread Fred Foldvary
--- Wei Dai [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: a donor should give all of his contributions to one charity, and not spread them among several. The logic is almost exactly the same. Likewise, a parent with several children should confine his spending to one child and let the rest die off. The logic is

Re: charity and time preference

2003-06-07 Thread Fred Foldvary
--- Wei Dai [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... surely one should either borrow money to do a life time worth of giving right away, or save and do all charity in one's will, or otherwise concentrate all charity giving to a single moment in time. That should generalize to raising children; when one's

Re: charity and time preference

2003-06-06 Thread Richard L. white
On 6/5/03 11:22 PM, Wei Dai [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Suppose I have some money that I don't want to spend, and I'm sure I'll never want to spend it. Should I give it to charity now, or put it in an index fund and bequeath it to charity in my will? Here's my argument in favor of charitable

Re: charity and time preference

2003-06-06 Thread Susan Hogarth
Quoting Wei Dai [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Suppose I have some money that I don't want to spend, and I'm sure I'll never want to spend it. Should I give it to charity now, or put it in an index fund and bequeath it to charity in my will? Here's my argument in favor of charitable procrastination.

Re: charity and time preference

2003-06-06 Thread Eric Crampton
Shouldn't we also worry about how poor people are now relative to how they'll be in the future? Today's poor are much better off than the poor from a century ago; presumably the poor a century from now will be less deserving than those of the present day? On Fri, 6 Jun 2003, Richard L. white

Re: charity and time preference

2003-06-06 Thread Wei Dai
On Fri, Jun 06, 2003 at 09:29:34AM -0400, Richard L. white wrote: Ignoring the utility of the money to the target charity today, e.g., food or medicine to live, But the money will have a greater utility tomorrow (since there will be more of it). Unless you think there will be less needy

Re: charity and time preference

2003-06-06 Thread Wei Dai
On Fri, Jun 06, 2003 at 12:25:11PM -0400, Robin Hanson wrote: Typical charity recipients also do not have access to borrowing opportunities that are as efficient as the ones available to you. So yes you could help them by delaying charity to people who would like to save, and borrowing

Re: charity and time preference

2003-06-06 Thread Richard L. white
Re: greater utility tomorrow argument: then taken to the extreme, your fund should not go to charity when you die but continue to grow until mankind can realistically forecast the end of the world at which point the fund (now an enormous asset) can be directed to improve the lives the least

Re: charity and time preference

2003-06-06 Thread Alex Tabarrok
Sure, the flaw is that this argument would imply that you hold the money forever. Alex -- Alexander Tabarrok Department of Economics, MSN 1D3 George Mason University Fairfax, VA, 22030 Tel. 703-993-2314 Web Page: http://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/ and Director of Research The Independent

Re: charity and time preference

2003-06-06 Thread Wei Dai
On Fri, Jun 06, 2003 at 12:05:01PM -0400, Eric Crampton wrote: Shouldn't we also worry about how poor people are now relative to how they'll be in the future? Today's poor are much better off than the poor from a century ago; presumably the poor a century from now will be less deserving than

Re: charity and time preference

2003-06-06 Thread Wei Dai
On Fri, Jun 06, 2003 at 11:49:15AM -0400, Susan Hogarth wrote: Speaking as the director of a very small but very active charity, I can tell you that we tend to have *quite high* time preferences. Possibly some of that is bleedover from the personality of the founder (that would be

Re: charity and time preference

2003-06-06 Thread John Morrow
Here's a quandry -- Since the more abject human misery there is, the more varied, specialized, and likely relatively cheaper (due to variety, breadth of the distribution of misery, etc) types of charity available for consumption, under what conditions are you willing to put up a side payment

Re: charity and time preference

2003-06-06 Thread Fred Foldvary
--- Wei Dai [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: By holding on to my money, I'm actually increasing the present value of the gift from the perspective of the recipient. Can anyone find a flaw in this argument? If the discount rate used for present value equals the interest rate of the investment, then the