Research Progress of Economics on Altruism

¹YIN Ge:National School of Development,Peking University

²FANG Hong:School of Economics and Management, Beihang University

³YU Miao-jie:Liaoning University

Abstract：

Altruistic behavior is common, and it is valuable with regard to utility. Research on altruistic behavior is not only academically important, but also serves to policy making. This paper surveys the researches on altruistic motives, and both theoretical and empirical ones on altruistic behavior in recent years. In terms of motivation, behavioral economists directly use the subjects' social networks in real life to explore people's altruistic motives, and have made important findings, such as distinguishing between baseline altruism and directed altruism, distinguishing between directed altruism and reciprocity. In theory, research based on social networks breaks the limitations of simple models and find new results, which alter our understanding of altruistic behavior quite deeply. Empirically, scholars have done a lot of analysis on altruistic behavior in terms of charitable donations, public goods provision, social norms, and people who are altruistic.

Keywords：altruistic; social networks; charitable donations; public goods; social norm