Over the past twenty-five years, about 330 (7 percent) of the country's 5,000 not-for-profit hospitals have converted to for-profit form This paper explores the causes and effects of conversions through two case studies -- Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, Kansas and the Columbia/HealthOne...

Catholic churches in Renaissance Florence supported themselves overwhelmingly from the contributions of wealthy citizens. The sale of private chapels within churches to individuals was a significant source of church funds, and facilitated a church construction boom. Chapel sales offered three...

Nonprofit hospitals receive favorable tax treatment in exchange for providing socially beneficial activities. Extending this rationale would suggest that, insofar as suppression of competition would allow nonprofits to cross-subsidize care for needy populations, nonprofit hospital mergers should...

The freedom of citizens to form voluntary associations has long been viewed as an essential ingredient of modern civil society. Our chapter revises the standard Tocquevillian account of associational freedom in the early United States by accentuating the role of state courts and legislatures in...

Nonprofit charitable organizations are exempt from most taxes, including local property taxes, but U.S. cities and towns increasingly request that nonprofits make payments in lieu of taxes (known as PILOTs). Strictly speaking, PILOTs are voluntary, though nonprofits may feel pressure to make...

People respond to those who ask. Within the charitable fundraising community, the power of the ask represents the backbone of most fundraising strategies. Despite this, the optimal design of communication strategies has received less formal attention. For their part, economists have recently...

Using the Beginning Postsecondary Student Survey and Transcript Data, we find no statistically significant differential return to certificate or Associate's degrees between for-profits and not-for-profits. Point estimates suggest a slightly lower return to a for-profit certificate and a slightly...

This note considers a relatively new form of financing for social services, the "Social Impact Bond." Proponents of Social Impact Bonds argue that they present a solution to several problems in funding social services, including performance measurement and the distribution of risk. Using a...

Entrepreneurs who start new firms may choose not-for-profit status as a means of committing to soft incentives. Such incentives protect donors, volunteers, consumers and employees from ex post expropriation of profits by the entrepreneur. We derive conditions under which completely...