"Public" radio and television are industries that illustrate well the interplay of outputs and mechanisms to finance them. The collective goods aspects of their broadcast outputs are unusually large; the process of production and distribution of programs is such that the incremental costs of...

Soaring costs have thrust health care into the political debate of every economically advanced country. The escalation of expenditures is being accompanied by increasing pressures on governments to confront what appears to be a dilemma -- either accepting the rising expenditures on health care,...

We estimate the responsiveness of donations to a number of economic variables, including price, advertising, and the availability of revenue from such other sources as government grants and program service sales. Utilizing a set of IRS data on individual nonprofit organizations in each of seven...

The effects of the favorable tax treatment of nonprofit commercial activities are best understood in a framework which explicitly accounts for the interaction between differential taxation and the preferences of nonprofit executives who may be averse to commercial activity, donors whose giving...

This paper focuses on three questions: Why are nonprofit sectors expanding? What are the effects of this growth on other parts of the economy? What is the evidence of nonprofits' performance? It presents evidence of nonprofits' growth in many nations, and examines the effects of that growth on...

The financial health of nonprofit organizations depends on their ability to generate donations and to sell services profitably. Are these two sources of revenue - one philanthropic, the other commercial - interrelated? More particularly, does a change in donative revenue (e.g., a cut in...

Complaints and geographic mobility--that is, "voice: and "exit"--are potential responses to "dissatisfaction" in the market for publicly provided municipal services, as in other markets. We find that reported dissatisfaction with public services can be used to predict both. Furthermore,...

The growing commercial activities of nonprofit charities, hospitals, educational institutions, arts organizations, day-care centers, nursing homes, and religious organizations have led many to question the legitimacy of the nonprofit designation and the concomitant tax and regulatory advantages...

In what ways, if any, does the behavior of government and nonprofit organizations differ? This paper examines evidence from two industries‹nursing homes and mentally handicapped facilities‹to determine whether government and nonprofit organization behavior differs in identifiable dimensions,...

This paper examines the inherent and growing tension between the social mission of Academic Health Centers (AHCs), to provide collective-type services, which cannot be sold profitably, and the means of financing those services, which involves provision of saleable private-type services. It finds...