Conservation easements raise a number of interesting legal issues, not the least of which is whether a conservation easement is automatically extinguished pursuant to the real property law doctrine of merger if its government or nonprofit holder acquires title to the encumbered land. This...

This paper examines three related puzzles: 1) Why do US universities dominate the global rankings? 2) Within US universities, why is Harvard University usually ranked at the top? 3) While most universities take centuries to acquire a global reputation how have many US universities leapfrogged to...

This article presents a benchmarking model for measuring the efficiency of organizations that provide humanitarian aid. The model was developed and implemented in the framework of a large international aid program. The model is based on measuring the labor productivity of each organization that...

By examining several different types of open institutions including open source software, open science, open square and (open) urban planning, this paper presents a general analysis of open institutional structure that is complementary to traditional proprietary mode. We argue that open...

We develop a model of endogenous network formation in order to examine the incentives for R&D collaboration in a mixed oligopoly. Our analysis reveals that the complete network, where each firm collaborates with all others, is uniquely stable, industry-profit maximizing and efficient. This...

The rivalry between developers of open source and proprietary software encourages open source developers to court users and respond to their needs. If the open source developer wants to promote her own open source standard and solutions, she may choose liberal license terms such as those of the...

This paper contributes to the discussion about nonprofit organizations’ (NPO) model of financial management in the accounts receivable area. In fact, when it is judged from a technical point of view, the opinion that nonprofit financial management do not differ from a for-profit business could...

When cooperatives were first invented, it was assumed their membership would be limited to one type of user. The Rochdale Pioneers favoured consumers, and employee representation was deliberately limited to a set percentage of board members. Similarly, Schulze Delitsch and Raiffeisen privileged...

How much, if at all, should an endowment invest in a firm whose activities run counter to the charitable missions the endowment funds? Endowments typically disregard the objectionable nature of or divest from such firms. However, if firm returns increase with activities the endowment combats,...

In this paper, we develop a competitive freight service provision network model for disaster relief. A humanitarian relief organization is interested in determining its most cost-effective deliveries of needed supplies in a crisis setting. Multiple freight service providers are engaged in...