Is Charitable Giving a Beauty Contest?
Empowering charitable lenders to pick and choose projects to support may result in discrimination based on physical characteristics such as attractiveness, weight, and skin color.
Syon Bhanot is an associate professor of economics at Swarthmore College. His areas of research include pro-social behavior, environmental conservation, development, and personal finance decisions. He is an academic affiliate at the Busara Center for Behavioral Economics and the Applied Cooperation Team at Yale University, and a founding coordinator of the Philadelphia Behavioral Science Initiative. He has worked with startups, social enterprises, cities, and international organizations, including the World Bank and the U.S. Agency for International Development, to apply the tools and methods of behavioral and experimental economics to solve real-world problems. He received a Ph.D. in public policy and an M.P.P., both from the Harvard Kennedy School.
Empowering charitable lenders to pick and choose projects to support may result in discrimination based on physical characteristics such as attractiveness, weight, and skin color.