Calum’s research has touched on several policy areas, including trade and monetary policy. Most recently, it has focused on ways in which governments do or could encourage and regulate the financial contributions that individuals make to charitable, non-profit and political organizations.
Calum M. Carmichael
Retired Professor
Tax treatment of philanthropy; legal definition of charity; political finance
BA in Economics and Political Science (Western University, Canada)
MPA in Economics and Public Policy (Princeton University, United States)
PhD in Economics (Princeton University, United States)
Calum’s research has touched on several policy areas, including trade and monetary policy. Most recently, it has focused on ways in which governments do or could encourage and regulate the financial contributions that individuals make to charitable, nonprofit and political organizations.
I think of economics as a way to interpret human behaviour in terms of purposeful but constrained choice. As such, I have found economics to be a great investigative tool, enabling me to examine practices of governments in past or present-day settings, and to surmise what might have been the reasons for those practices, as well as their consequences. Economics has also proved to be a creative tool. It has introduced me to different issues, institutions and time periods; and it has challenged me to come up with models of interactive human behaviour that are simple in the sense of being able to generate certain hypotheses and results, but that are not simplistic in the sense of still being able to capture key aspects of the settings at hand – whether those settings involve funding the navy in classical Athens, or defining the bounds of charity in Tudor England, or lowering the tax credits for contributions to religious organizations, or disclosing the identities of donors to political parties.
Carmichael, C. M. “Charity misplaced: The formation in common law of a deficient fiscal concept.” Charity Law & Practice Review 13(2): pp. 27-49 (2011)
Calum M Carmichael. “Managing Munificence: The Reform of Naval Finance in Classical Athens.” Historical methods 42(30): pp.83-96 (July 2009) Washington: Taylor & Francis Inc. ISSN: 0161-5440
“Charitable ends (perhaps) by political means: what are governments regulating?,” in P. Henry and G. Lideikyte-Huber, eds, The Routledge Handbook on Taxation and Philanthropy, London: Routeledge, 2021.
“Creating Incentives: Tax Systems in Comparative Perspective,” in J. Harrow, T. Jung, and S. Phillips, eds, The Routledge Companion to Philanthropy, London: Routledge, 2016.
Editor for SPPA’s Philantropy and Non-Profit Leadership News Outlet PANL Perspectives. PANL Perspectives offers news and insights for the Philanthropy and Nonprofit sector in Canada. The editors and editorial team produce and gather evidence-based stories, original interviews and insider reflections about shifting power relationships in the sector, ethics in philanthropy and fundraising, the role of private foundations, and much more.
