Dr. Robert Mayo, assistant professor of economics at Concordia, had a paper accepted at the Journal of Economic Science Association in May of 2023, after five years of research and revision.
During the research process, Mayo was assisted by Concordia alumni Luke Lillehaugen '19 and Porter Ludwig '19.
In the field of economics, getting a research paper published is typically a long, grueling process. The five years it took for this paper to be taken from first draft to accepted publication is not unusual.
The paper, "Demographic differences in the effect of price on giving in a diverse population," discusses how and why people give to charity.
"The practical applications are in informing fundraisers on best practices to maximize giving. Frequently, matching funds are offered (i.e. Every dollar you give will be matched one-for-one). The effect of the ratio of matching, one-for-one, two-for-one, etc. has been studied but to my knowledge no one has examined whether different demographic groups respond the same way," May said, describing the project.
"Our paper found that there was a large difference between religious and non-religious people in their response to matching. Changing matching fund ratios (effectively changing the price of giving) had a large effect on the amounts given by non-religious people but very little effect on religious people."
Lillehaugen and Ludwig co-authored the paper, writing first drafts of several sections and reviewing the full paper with suggestions. They also wrote and executed the software code for the experiment under Mayo's supervision and mentorship.
"Co-authoring with students is a very good way to combine research and teaching, which are usually seen as separate endeavors," Mayo said.