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Fiscal support from endowments is a longstanding tradition in many institutions of higher education. The first known endowment in an American academic library resulted from a bequest of £500 from Thomas Hollis to the Harvard College Library in 1774. The number of endowments grew steadily in the 1800s, and by the turn of the century there were significant endowments in many libraries, including Yale, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Brown, the University of Virginia, and the University of North Carolina. Some institutions came to be heavily dependent on trusts for library funding. Between 1928 and 1956, for example, endowment supplied the total budgetary allocation for acquisitions at the Dartmouth College Library. Similarly, as late as the early 1950s, all of the book funds for the Harvard College Library came from its endowment.

Economic problems of the system of education were the object of interest of classics of economic science – A. Smith and A. Marshall – who viewed education as a source of public capital, and acquired skills and competences – as a part of national wealth. These ideas were further developed in the theory of human capital by T. Schultz, G.S. Becker, G. Psacharopoulos, P. Teixeira, and R. Solow. At that, specifics of modernization economic processes in the sphere of education, peculiarities of modern functional and financial state require conceptual consideration and provision of development of working mechanism of effectiveness of spending assets of endowment funds. The purpose of this paper is to determine the mechanism of effectiveness of spending assets of endowment funds on the basis of mathematical models.

The paper offers a mechanism of determination of effectiveness of spending of endowment funds.

Effectiveness of an endowment fund’s effectiveness depends on the results of fund-raising activities, supporting relations with donators, and financing of targeted programs and directions of activities. This information is key information during the determination of results of endowment fund’s activities for current and potential donators. That is why it should provide reports in the order of formation of endowment, received revenue from trust management, and direction of usage of revenues from endowment, for which a donator has given his assets, on a regular basis.

In the modern system of higher education, the issue of search for new sources of financing for the purpose of improvement of quality of education and educational process, growth of wages of academic staff, attraction of foreign lecturers and specialists with practical experience of work from various spheres of production, and increase of stipends of the best students remains actual. The paper offers a mechanism of determination of effectiveness of spending of endowment funds.

Looks at the problem of endowment assurances that do not meet their targets to repay residential mortgages. By analysing the present value of payments under different inflation and interest‐rate regimes, we conclude that the perceived problems with endowment policies may simply be a manifestation of “money illusion”. Nevertheless, there could be frictional problems and other problems arising from the use of endowment assurances to repay mortgages which we identify but do not analyse in detail. The failure of such a major method of repaying mortgages to perform in line with expectations will have implications for the residential housing market.

Preservation activities have existed in libraries since the early days of librarianship, but these efforts were mostly decentralized and buried in the work of many different departments. Not until the 1970s did library organizations begin to add preservation to organizational charts on a departmental or middle management level, along with its new administrative costs. At that time, libraries were struggling with early efforts at automation and the many changes it would bring to their organizations. Preservation department functions, formerly decentralized from an administrative and budgetary standpoint under the headings of commercial binding, book repair, special collections, or circulation, were now identified as a budget line forced to compete for funds with newly formed library systems departments as well as other traditional library functions. This was particularly difficult given that a large portion of the costs of a comprehensive preservation department were new and additive (Fasana and Baker, 1992, p. 132), yet provided few immediately evident benefits. A burgeoning library systems unit could place libraries on the cutting edge of technology; automated card catalogs could improve productivity and efficiency for staff, and also provide for better patron access to collections. Needless to say, systems departments were much better funded than preservation units at this time.

We estimate the parental investment response to the child endowment at birth, by analysing the effect of child birth weight on the hours worked by the mother two years after birth. Mother’s working hours soon after child birth are a measure of investments in their children as a decrease (increase) in hours raises (lowers) her time investment in the child. The child birth endowment is endogenously determined in part by unobserved traits of parents, such as investments during pregnancy. We adopt an instrumental variables estimation. Our instrumental variables are measures of the father’s health endowment at birth, which drive child birth weight through genetic transmission but does not affect directly the mother’s postnatal investments, conditional on maternal and paternal human capital and prenatal investments. We find an inverted U-shape relationship between mothers worked hours and birth weight, suggesting that both low and extremely high child birth weight are associated with child health issues for which mothers compensate by reducing their labour supply. The mother’s compensating response to child birth weight seems slightly attenuated for second and later born children. Our study contributes to the literature on the response of parental investments to child’s health at birth by proposing new and more credible instrumental variables for the child health endowment at birth and allowing for a heterogeneous response of the mother’s investment for first born and later born children.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the matching relationship between factor endowment and industrial structure, and its impact on economic growth.

The assortative matching method is developed to quantitatively measure the matching between factor endowment and industrial structure. A series of empirical tests are then carried out to evaluate the impact on the economic development of the matching.

1) The matching between factor endowment and industrial structure has a significantly positive impact on economic growth. (2) Economic growth reaches its maximum when the gap between the two sectors narrows to zero. (3) This effect is particularly significant for countries with higher GDP per capita and GNI per capita. (4) The results remain robust after employing a series of tests.

Aggressive industrial policies are not desirable. The optimal industrial structure is the one that complied with the comparative advantage of the given factor endowment in the economy.

So far, there has been a significant lack of an applicable quantitative indicator for measuring the matching between factor endowment and industrial structure, which is essential for conducting empirical tests and providing evidence for related economic theories.

The endowment effect is arguably one of the most robust phenomena documented in economics, behavioral decision theory and consumer research. However, the endowment effect has traditionally been studied as a fairly static phenomenon at the transactional level of analysis.

This paper documents this “contagious” endowment effect using lab experiments and such field data as eBay transactions and discuss the managerial implication of these findings.

This study suggests that the endowment effect is not limited to the level of the specific object, but can manifest itself with the more abstract class of objects to which a specific object happens to belong.

A logical next step would be to examine the boundary conditions – how similar does the subsequent object have to be for the endowment effect to transfer over to it? A related aspect would be whether there are boundary conditions arising from the quality of the endowment.

The effects reported here probably underlie the success of the many types of “bait and switch” schemes that have been used by the more unsavory type of marketer. As such, these findings might have implications for policy in the area of consumer protection.

This paper argues for and presents evidence consistent with the notion that the endowment effect is dynamic and can be transferred from one transaction to another and refer to this generalization of the endowment effect to other, similar products as “contagious endowment.”

The endowment effect is well-established in economics, psychology and marketing where sellers place a higher value on a good than buyers. One potential moderator, namely, power is explored. The authors predicted that feeling powerful can reverse the effect, making buyers place a higher value on a good than sellers.

The authors manipulated power to assess the effects on the valuation of three different products (keychain, gift card and iPhone case). They also assessed participants’ focus on parting with the good (money), which is a loss, and receiving money (the good), which is a gain, for sellers (buyers).

Feelings of power reduced sellers’ prices but they increased buyers’. Crucially, the authors observed the endowment effect, but only under conditions of low power. When participants had high power, the effect reversed, with buyers placing a higher value on the good under transaction than sellers. Process data indicated that powerful buyers and sellers focused on what they gained and less on what they lost, compared to powerless buyers and sellers.

The authors link the construct of power with the endowment effect, showing that the former can moderate the latter. Certainly, the endowment effect is well-established, but there are moderators and boundary conditions that warrant consideration.

The results suggest a case where the market may clear, where buyers value a consumer product more than sellers, and thus buyers would likely accept the offer made by sellers.

The authors are the first to link the power literature with the endowment effect. They also show a possible moderator for the well-established endowment effect.

Libraries rely on endowment revenue for collection development and general operating expenses. Endowment gifts, both for collection development and for general operating expenses, can be a significant priority for a library during this fund‐raising effort. As such, it is this column's goal to summarize the challenges and advantages of these endowment gifts, and strategies for endowment fundraising in libraries.

Uses lessons learned by endowment efforts at the University of Pennsylvania Library, noting strategies that have worked.

Endowments present unique challenges and opportunities. While their benefits to the library are often less understood and intangible, often they are more accessible to donors due to a low threshold for establishment and the flexibility to give over a period of years.

Challenges and advantages are explored and strategies are offered to improve the effectiveness of endowment fundraising including marketing, challenge programs, and bequest encouragement.