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CESifo Economic Studies Advance Access published online on February 8, 2008
CESifo Economic Studies, doi:10.1093/cesifo/ifn002
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Ifo Institute for Economic Research, Munich. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Pro-social Motivation and the Delivery of Social Services

Patrick Francois* and Michael Vlassopoulos{dagger}

*Department of Economics, University of British Columbia, CEPR and CentER, Tilburg. e-mail: francois{at}interchange.ubc.ca
{dagger}Division of Economics, University of Southampton, UK. e-mail: M.Vlassopoulos{at}soton.ac.uk

This article provides an overview highlighting some major themes of the recent literature on the role of pro-social motivation in the provision of social services. We focus on the insights obtained from two alternative ways of modelling pro-social motivation; action-oriented and output-oriented altruism. This literature has implications regarding the design of optimal incentives, the selection of motivated agents and its interaction with monetary rewards, and the optimal organizational form required to exploit such motivations. We also discuss the implications for government provision of social services from the perspective of a parallel literature that emphasizes the non-contractible nature of output, and contrast it with the implications derived from work emphasizing the role of pro-social motivation. (JEL codes: H11, J32, J45, L31, L33)

Key Words: donated labour • intrinsic motivation • power of incentives • provision of social services

This article was presented at the CESifo Area Conference on Employment and Social Protection (ESP) on May 18–20, 2007 in Munich, Germany. The authors are extremely grateful to the participants and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments and discussion.


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