IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/frz/wpaper/wp2013_07.rdf.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Nonprofits are not alike: The Role of Catholic and Protestant Affiliation

Author

Listed:
  • Lapo Filistrucchi

    () (DISEI, Università degli studi di Firenze)

  • Jens Prüfer

Abstract

There are no generally accepted results regarding the objectives, decisions, and economic outcomes of nonprofit organizations, as compared to for-profit or public firms. We posit that this inconclusiveness is due to a too broad definition of nonprofits and that different types of nonprofits exist. This conjecture is investigated by constructing a model in which nonprofits differ by religious affiliation and testing the resulting hypotheses on the observed behavior of German nonprofit hospitals. We find that Catholic and Protestant nonprofits adopt significantly different strategies in the market. This confirms our conjecture and the importance of religion for economic outcomes.

Suggested Citation

  • Lapo Filistrucchi & Jens Prüfer, 2013. "Nonprofits are not alike: The Role of Catholic and Protestant Affiliation," Working Papers - Economics wp2013_07.rdf, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa.
    • Handle: RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2013_07.rdf
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.disei.unifi.it/upload/sub/pubblicazioni/repec/pdf/wp07_2013.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jill R. Horwitz & Austin Nichols, 2007. "What Do Nonprofits Maximize? Nonprofit Hospital Service Provision and Market Ownership Mix," NBER Working Papers 13246, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Sascha O. Becker & Ludger Woessmann, 2009. "Was Weber Wrong? A Human Capital Theory of Protestant Economic History," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 124(2), pages 531-596.
    3. Gilat Levy & Ronny Razin, 2012. "Religious Beliefs, Religious Participation, and Cooperation," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 121-151, August.
    4. Vlassopoulos, Michael, 2009. "Quality, reputation and the choice of organizational form," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 515-527, August.
    5. Josse Delfgaauw & Robert Dur & Carol Propper & Sarah Smith, 2011. "Management Practices: Are Not For Profits Different?," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 11-094/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    6. Ghatak, Maitreesh & Mueller, Hannes, 2011. "Thanks for nothing? Not-for-profits and motivated agents," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1-2), pages 94-105, February.
    7. Patrick Francois, 2003. "Not-For-Profit Provision of Public Services," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(486), pages 53-61, March.
    8. Filistrucchi, L. & Ozbugday, F.C., 2012. "Mandatory Quality Disclosure and Quality Supply : Evidence from German Hospitals," Discussion Paper 2012-031, Tilburg University, Tilburg Law and Economic Center.
    9. Karen Eggleston & Yu-Chu Shen & Joseph Lau & Christopher H. Schmid & Jia Chan, 2008. "Hospital ownership and quality of care: what explains the different results in the literature?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(12), pages 1345-1362.
    10. Patrick Francois & Michael Vlassopoulos, 2008. "Pro-social Motivation and the Delivery of Social Services," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo, vol. 54(1), pages 22-54, March.
    11. Ellis, Randall P., 1998. "Creaming, skimping and dumping: provider competition on the intensive and extensive margins1," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 537-555, October.
    12. Editors, 2003. "Editor's Introduction," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(2), pages 315-318, April.
    13. Lakdawalla, Darius & Philipson, Tomas, 2006. "The nonprofit sector and industry performance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(8-9), pages 1681-1698, September.
    14. Editors, 2003. "Editor's Introduction," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(4), pages 645-648, October.
    15. Jeremy Thornton, 2008. "Competition, Contractibility, and the Market for Donors to Nonprofits," Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 24(1), pages 215-246, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Governance; Owner Objectives; Religious Organizations; Catholicism and Protestantism; Hospitals;

    JEL classification:

    • L31 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Nonprofit Institutions; NGOs; Social Entrepreneurship
    • L21 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Business Objectives of the Firm
    • Z12 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Religion
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2013_07.rdf. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Giorgio Ricchiuti). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/defirit.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.