Assessing the Productive Efficiency of Non-Profit Organisations: a Comparative Analysis

Empirical evidence on the productive efficiency of non-profit organisations is at present scarce and not conclusive. In the present work, we analyse this issue by relying on a new data-set about Italian for-profit and non-profit organisations engaged in the provision of communal services. While most of the existing evidence relates to health-care organisations only, our data-set also surveys organisations involved in other communal services.The results indicate that the efficiency of non-profit organisations does not significantly differ from that of other organisations, and shed some light about the determination of their performance. The selection procedures adopted in hiring labour are found to be very relevant. We also find that the production of relational goods (measured by two different proxies) is related to organisational efficiency and to the promotion efforts of non-profit organisations.