To address the needs of people affected by the Super Typhoon Haiyan – locally known as Yolanda – that hit the Philippines on November 8, 2013 international relief organizations in the Netherlands are collectively raising funds on Monday, November 18, 2013. Commercial and public national TV and radio stations work together in the fundraising campaign.

Yes, the incentive structure in the higher education and research industry should be reformed in order to reduce the inflation of academic degrees and research. That much is clear from the increasing numbers of cases of outright fraud and academic misconduct, including more subtle forms of data manipulation, p-hacking, and rising rates of (false) positive publication bias as a result.

Does civic engagement breed trust? According to a popular version of social capital theory, civic engagement should produce generalized trust among citizens. In a new paper accepted for publication in Political Psychology, Erik van Ingen (Tilburg University) and I put this theory to the test by examining the causal connection between civic engagement and generalized trust using multiple methods and multiple (prospective) panel datasets.

A new version of the User Manual for the Giving in the Netherlands Panel Survey is now available: version 2.2. The GINPS12 questionnaire is here (in Dutch).

Nalatenschappen: goededoelenorganisaties ontvangen steeds meer inkomsten uit nalatenschappen, naar verwachting €86 miljard tot 2059. Evenementen: goededoelenorganisaties ontvangen steeds meer inkomsten uit evenementen zoals Alpe d’Huzes waar enthousiaste vrijwilligers sponsorgelden voor werven.

Nalatenschappen zijn een steeds belangrijkere bron van inkomsten voor  goede doelen. En deze trend zal zich de komende jaren naar verwachting doorzetten: er zijn door de baby boom na de Tweede Wereldoorlog veel ouderen in Nederland, zij zijn vaak vermogend, en deze rijke grijze golf zal de komende jaren komen te overlijden. Net zoals we aan de kust een grote golf op het strand af zien komen.

Ralph-Friso Belksma, student in de master Public Administration in Leiden, schrijft: “Voor een onderzoek voor mijn studie ben ik op zoek naar enkele gegevens met betrekking tot geef gedrag. Ik kan hier alleen moeilijk gegevens over vinden. Vandaar mijn vraag: Geven vrouwen meer geld uit aan goede doelen dan mannen? Hoe oud zijn zij en hoeveel geld geven zij gemiddeld uit? Ik had deze gegevens graag in 1 tabel willen zien.

This post in pdf How generous are the wealthy? Surely wealth enables citizens to give higher amounts to charitable causes, but does wealth also make people more generous? Do the wealthy give a higher proportion of their income? Using data from the High Net Worth supplement to the 2012 wave Giving in the Netherlands Panel Survey we can answer this question.

Crowdfunding is a new model of financing public goods. In the Netherlands it has become highly visible by the cutbacks in public funding for the arts. Crowdfunding has grown exponentially in the past years, not just in projects for the arts, but also in financing commercial startups and recently also in funding for science. However, the success of projects advertised on crowdfunding platforms varies enormously.

Op de Dag van de Filantropie 2013 – het jaarlijks terugkerend evenement op de laatste donderdag van april – is dit jaar het boek ‘Geven in Nederland 2013’ gepresenteerd.

PDF of this post The Teaching Trap I did it again this week – I tried to teach students. Yes, It’s my job, and I love it. But that’s completely my own fault. If it were for the incentives I encounter in the academic institution where I work, it would be far better to not spend time on teaching at all. For my career in academia, the thing that counts most heavily is how many publications in top journals I can realize.