Do nonprofits manipulate investment returns?

Douglas Almond and Xing Xia

Economics Letters, 2017, vol. 155, issue C, 62-66

Abstract: We provide evidence that nonprofit organizations manipulate reported investment returns to avoid investment losses. We find a sharp discontinuity around zero in cross-sectional distribution of the rates of return on investments for tax-exempt organizations: rates of return are significantly more likely to be slightly positive than slightly negative. This pattern is found for a wide range of nonprofit missions, including religious related charities and community improvement organizations.

Keywords: Nonprofit organization; Investment returns; Financial statement manipulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K13 L31 M40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176517301039
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:ecolet:v:155:y:2017:i:c:p:62-66

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2017.03.014

Access Statistics for this article

Economics Letters is currently edited by Economics Letters Editorial Office

More articles in Economics Letters from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().