If to behave commercially is to act like a for-profit firm, then the ultimate expression of commercialism for a nonprofit is to convert its legal status to the for-profit form. Conversion is increasingly common, most notably in health care, and is now attracting considerable public attention....

With a growing emphasis on cost containment, health care providers must increasingly consider costs whenever they adopt new technologies. This has implications for the kinds of technologies that medical R&D firms develop. We report the results of a survey of 58 medical R&D firms to determine...

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,...