Nonprofits and the Scope of Government: Theory and an Application to the Health Sector

Karen Eggleston

No 32020, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Nonprofits supply many tax-financed services like healthcare and education. Yet nonprofits are absent from the canonical property rights theory of ownership. Extending the government “make or buy” decision to nonprofits and ex post frictions based on contracts as reference points suggests that contracting out to a nonprofit can be optimal when “mission” alignment credibly signals adherence to the spirit and not just the letter of the contract in unforeseen contingencies. The model sheds light on differential nonprofit presence across the spectrum of basic services, as illustrated by an application to the health sector.

JEL-codes: H1 H4 H44 I0 I11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-pub
Note: EH PE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32020.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32020

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32020
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().