Valuing non-pecuniary instruments of human resource management

This empirical study examines the degree to which non-pecuniary factors affect work incentives by monetizing their value. Although the literature has acknowledged the importance of non-pecuniary factors, the problem of measuring their effectiveness in influencing work incentives has persisted. Using survey data collected from employees, the analyses are intended to elicit aspects of work relations in the real labor market that are difficult to study using laboratory experiments. Our analyses underscore the importance of favorable non-pecuniary factors as affecting work incentives. The results of the analyses also reveal some patterns related to the relative importance of non-pecuniary factors across countries. Irrespective of the country, self-motivated devices have a greater impact on work effort than hospitality-based approaches do. In addition, employees in countries with higher GDP consider non-pecuniary factors more highly than employees in countries with lower GDP do.     

Proximity Services in Belgium: An Analysis of Public and Nonprofit Relations

In this paper, we analyze the interaction between nonprofit organizations (NPOs) and government with regard to the provision of proximity services. Given the characteristics of these services and the organizational features specific to each sector, we argue that the relationship between the public and the nonprofit sectors is necessary but rather complex. We illustrate our analysis with some empirical evidence collected by the CERISIS-UCL in 1996 for the city of Charleroi (Belgium). This survey shows that NPOs are the major producers of proximity services but are, on average, largely subsidized by government. Public intervention is also significant in the production of these services but is the most striking in their financing. These results evoke the existence of a multifaceted interaction between the public and nonprofit sectors, that we try to understand in this paper. Our analysis highlights that the tension between the current focus of public policies on job creation for the low-skilled unemployed and the service-based mission of most NPOs might generate inappropriate responses to the needs of the community. It also suggests that this conflict of objectives, given the current organization of proximity services, is likely to threaten the autonomy and originality of the nonprofit sector.     

THE NONPROFIT SECTOR OF THE U.S. ECONOMY: A METHODOLOGICAL STATEMENT

United States input-output accounts identify and measure the interrelationships between the various industries in the United States economy. However, these accounts do not identify nonprofit activities from their for-profit counterparts in the service-producing sector. This paper, prepared by Gabriel Rudney and Paula Young, presents the methodology and summary data produced by disaggregating the service-producing industries to identify separately nonprofit activities.
The input-output accounts for 1977 produced in this study include 107 industries, but in this paper the results are summarized into 14 industries showing only nonprofit and for-profit components. The GNP and total outputs in this study are consistent with the revised input-output accounts for 1977 prepared by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis.     

THE INFLUENCE OF VOLUNTEERS, DONATIONS AND PUBLIC SUBSIDIES ON THE WAGE LEVEL OF NONPROFIT WORKERS: EVIDENCE FROM AUSTRIAN MATCHED DATA

ABSTRACT ** :  In this article we add to the literature analyzing wages in the nonprofit sector by estimating a wage function based on employer-employee matched data for Austria. We concentrate on the influence of voluntary contributions on the wage level of paid workers. By using a quantile regression approach we find that the existence of volunteers reduces the wages of paid employees in nonprofit organizations. The number of volunteers does not have an influence on the wage level. Donations have a small but positive effect for higher income groups only. Public subsidies increase wages of all paid workers in a nonprofit organization.     

An Input–Output Analysis of the Nonprofit Sector in the USA and Germany

This paper presents an exploratory input–output analysis of the nonprofit sectors in former West Germany and the USA based on the conceptual and data structure provided by the System of National Accounts. When compared with the USA, the West German nonprofit sector catered more to government demands. A higher proportion of West German nonprofit services went to government and a smaller proportion went to households. In terms of the multiplier effect of nonprofit output, we find that an additional dollar of nonprofit services delivered to households and/or government induced indirectly an additional 83 cents of business output in the USA. By comparison, West Germany's nonprofit sector had a lower multiplier effect, with 43 Pfennig per DM1. We also find that businesses have a much larger stake in nonprofit production as intermediate suppliers when compared to their role as intermediate consumers. The economic position the nonprofit sector occupies in both countries is that of a producing sector, taking inputs from businesses and providing outputs for households and governments. This general structural characteristic suggests that the nonprofit sector is particularly sensitive to changes in government policies as well as to shifts in private household incomes, yet relatively insensitive to demand changes in other industries.     

The nonprofit sector and industry performance

Despite the importance of nonprofit industries in the economy, little analysis has been conducted as to whether the behavior of such industries differs from that of for-profit industries. Extending previous firm-level analyses, we propose a neoclassical theory with an endogenous nonprofit sector. Our analysis implies that nonprofit firms have a competitive advantage over for-profit firms, so that marginal changes in the industry operate through the for-profit sector. As such, marginal industry behavior is identical to that of a for-profit industry and nonprofit regulations may have a limited impact or even no impact on overall industry performance. Our theory has the methodological advantage that standard for-profit analysis applies directly to nonprofit firms, because they can be analyzed as for-profit firms with lower costs. We discuss aspects of the empirical literature that test this theory of nonprofit activity.     

THE VALUE OF VOLUNTEER LABOR AND THE FACTORS INFLUENCING PARTICIPATION: EVIDENCE FOR THE UNITED STATES FROM 2002 THROUGH 2005

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the number of people who volunteered rose from 59.8 million in 2002 to 65.4 million in 2005. Those volunteering benefit from their activity in various ways; however, these benefits are non-pecuniary and are generally not recognized in the national economic accounts used to measure gross domestic product (GDP). This paper uses data from the 2002–05 Current Population Survey Volunteer Supplements to assign a dollar value to volunteering. Different methodologies yield annual estimates from $116 to $153 billion (in 2005 dollars) over the four years (between 0.9 and 1.3 percent of 2005 GDP). Additionally, characteristics of individuals most likely to volunteer are identified. The volunteer rate varies by demographic characteristics in addition to geographic location, labor force participation, and business sector. Furthermore, the data suggest that volunteering is a "normal good" because participation increases with income even after controlling for observables.     

The Institutional Theory of Radhamakal Mukerjee: Lessons for Modern Nonprofit Economics

This paper examines the way the institutional economics of Radhamakal Mukerjee can inform modern nonprofit economics. A brief survey of Mukerjee's work highlights several elements of his theory that yield useful implications understanding the nonprofit sector. First, Mukerjee's theory implies that this sector's role is in helping the economies to better accommodate broader societal values, rather than in addressing market failure. Second, his theory suggests that the nonprofit sector provides an institutional framework for the pursuit of common interests that are not reducible to individual utility maximization. Finally, as he considered the state to be inherently coercive, he believed the nonprofit sector to be the only meaningful outlet for citizenship behavior, thus advancing an original theory of complementary state-nonprofit relationship. The paper concludes with calling for more institutionalist research on the economics of the nonprofit sector.     

PUTTING THE CIVIL SOCIETY SECTOR ON THE ECONOMIC MAP OF THE WORLD

ABSTRACT ** : The past twenty‐five years have witnessed a spectacular expansion of philanthropy, volunteering, and civil society organizations throughout the world. Indeed, we seem to be in the midst of a ‘global associational revolution,’ a worldwide upsurge of organized private voluntary activity. Despite the promise that this development holds, however, the nonprofit or civil society sector remains the invisible subcontinent on the social landscape of most countries, poorly understood by policymakers and the public at large, often encumbered by legal limitations, and inadequately utilized as a mechanism for addressing public problems. One reason for this is the lack of basic information on its scope, structure, financing, and contributions in most parts of the world. This lack of information is due in part to the fact that significant components of the nonprofit sector fall within the non‐observed, or informal, economy, and in part to the way even the observed parts of this sector have historically been treated in the prevailing System of National Accounts (SNA). This paper provides an overview of a series of steps that have been taken over the past 20 years by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University in cooperation with colleagues around the world and, more recently, with officials in the United Nations Statistics Division and the International Labour Organization to remedy this situation, culminating in the issuance and initial implementation of a new United Nations Handbook on Nonprofit Institutions in the System of National Accounts and the forthcoming publication of a new International Labour Organization Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work. Taken together, these efforts point the way toward putting the civil society sector on the economic map of the world for the first time in a systematically comparative way.     

Toward a holistic nonprofit economics: insights from institutionalism and systems theory

The main thrust of the current nonprofit economics literature is that nonprofit organizations exist to correct market failures. However, the methodological individualism of the market failure theories of nonprofit organizations makes these theories unable to take account of the complex institutional embeddedness of the nonprofit sector. To fill this gap, the present paper outlines an approach of holistic nonprofit economics by building upon the insights from Thorstein Veblen’s institutionalism and Ervin Laszlo’s contribution to the general systems theory. From the Veblenian dichotomy, holistic nonprofit economics benefits by recognizing the limitations of the profit motive in ensuring a high quality of community life. From the systems theory conception of the multi-level universe, holistic nonprofit economics borrows the insight that the key to a high quality of community life is in the integration between man, society, and nature. Accordingly, holistic nonprofit economics locates the role of the nonprofit sector in ensuring this integration by counteracting the profit motive. Thus, in contrast to the market failure theories of nonprofit organizations, holistic nonprofit economics generates a research program exploring the embeddedness of the nonprofit sector into the encompassing societal and natural systems.     

劳动力流动非金钱因素实证分析——基于结构方程

文章运用结构方程的方法研究了影响劳动力流动的非金钱因素。文章首先提出问题，指出影响劳动力流动的因素除了有经济因素以外，还有教育、卫生、社会保障和基础设施等非金钱因素；接下来，通过结构方程，对中国31个行政区域影响劳动力流动的非金钱因素的具体情况进行了实证分析；最后，得到了分析的结果，文章认为，城市基础设施、教育经费的投入、以及城乡一体的社会保障体系对劳动力流动的影响呈现出正向的关系。特别是人均住宅建筑面积的提高可以极大程度的增加劳动力的流入。另一方面，劳动力流动程度的加强对劳动力进入地区的部分行业影响也大致呈现出正向的关系。劳动力大量的进入流入地，将会导致流入地劳动力要素供给增加，尤其是具有较高素质的劳动力要素流动还会增加流入地的人力资本存量，激励当地企业增加对人力资本投资，以提高企业自身劳动力的素质。     

The Swedish nonprofit sector in international comparison

The previous picture of the nonprofit sector in Sweden has been biased by a narrow US perspective. Mainstream nonprofit literature seems to neglect work carried out in the important but more complex tradition of the civil society. In this article, recent cross-national data reflecting both these paradigms are presented. This gives us a better picture of the Swedish sector and highlights limitations of earlier approaches, not only for our understanding of the Swedish sector but also of the sector elsewhere. To continue the quest for the raison d'être of the sector, not only are more cross-national data needed but we must also develop a multidisciplinary framework in which to understand the data.     

Harvesting Preemption, Industrial Concentration and Enclosure of National Marine Fisheries

This paper explores how harvesting technology can affect firms' internalisation of common pool externalities and the incentives for expanding firm's size. Focusing on supply side non-pecuniary externalities, our closed-entry harvesting competition model suggests that when marginal harvesting costs are weakly sensitive to common pool externalities, atomistic competition is likely to remain, other things equal, as the predominant industrial structure in the fishery. The avenue for increasing industrial concentration is modelled via Stackelberg leadership which offers the option of preempting rivals' production. In our static modelling, a fishery subject to Stackelberg signalling results in higher overfishing versus the case of a highly decentralised harvesting sector (proxied by the use of Nash conjectures). Given that static optimising behaviour could be interpreted as a result of entry controls and other fishing regulations being widely perceived as ineffective controls, the obtained overfishing ranking suggests that in fisheries where strategic preemption in production is feasible, but where entry controls and other important regulations on fishing effort are considered to be ineffective, overfishing is likely to remain the predominant outcome, even if other incentives promote evolution towards a more concentrated industry structure. When the fishery is already overpopulated by numerous small firms, whatever advantages large firms may have in terms of profitability, numerous small-scale fishermen tend to make up for in the political arena. This imposes constraints on the politically feasible fishing regulations. We use a second best welfare benchmark to illustrate resulting policy trade-offs.     

Is the Government Failure Theory Still Relevant? A panel analysis using US state level data

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the robustness of the government failure theory. A core feature of the government failure theory is demand heterogeneity. Previous studies have brought into question the robustness of the government failure theory, due to inconsistent results concerning the explanatory power of demand heterogeneity. Therefore, in this paper we revisit this important research agenda using US state level panel data. We find the two‐way fixed effects model a suitable model for testing the government failure theory's robustness and present findings which indicate that observable demand heterogeneity has a positive effect on the size of the nonprofit sector. This paper also empirically examines the relevance of the complementary financing hypothesis in terms of the cooperative nature of the governmental and nonprofit sector relationship; that is where governments delegate the production of quasi‐public goods to the nonprofit sector.     

国有企业中的薪酬管制与在职消费

本文从我国国有企业中存在薪酬管制这一特殊制度背景出发,对上市公司高管人员在职消费行为进行理论分析,并对在职消费的主要影响因素与薪酬管制的经济后果进行了实证检验。经验证据表明,我国上市公司在职消费主要受企业租金、绝对薪酬和企业规模等因素的影响;由于薪酬管制的存在,在职消费成为国有企业管理人员的替代性选择,说明在职消费内生于国有企业面临的薪酬管制约束;与民营企业中内生于公司的薪酬契约相比,国有企业中受到管制的外生薪酬安排缺乏应有的激励效率。     

What brings your subjects to the lab? A field experiment

This paper reports a field experiment involving manipulation of invitations to register in an experimental economics subject database. Two types of invitations were sent out: one emphasizing pecuniary and the other non-pecuniary benefits of participation. The former resulted in higher response rate and the strength of this treatment effect was comparable in different groups defined by gender and academic major. In a follow-up test conducted about a year later it was found that individuals recruited by invitations emphasizing monetary benefits were less willing to make an effort to participate in a non-paid survey. The very same survey also showed that they were marginally less altruistic in general.     

Robotization and labour dislocation in the manufacturing sectors of OECD countries: a panel VAR approach

Robots are the most important innovation which has affected the production process in the last three decades. Thanks to the latest advances in technology, they have been able to perform an ever-increasing number of tasks, eventually replacing human work within the whole production process. However, because of the scarcity of suitable data, the extent of this potentially disrupting process is not fully assessed. This paper makes up for the lack of empirical evidence on the effect of robotization on labour dislocation using data collected by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) on the number of robots installed in the different manufacturing industries of 16 OECD countries over the period 2011–2016. We show that at the industry level a 1% growth in the number of robots reduces the growth rate of worked hours by 0.16, as well as the selling prices and the real values of the compensations of employees. Moreover, we show that a given sector is more likely to be robotized when it is expanding both in terms of relative prices and employee compensations. We conclude that, at least in the selected countries, the introduction of robots plays a key role in slowing down human labour and compensation growth.     

CLASSIFICATION PROBLEMS AND THE DIVIDING LINE BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND THE MARKET: AN EXAMINATION OF NHS FOUNDATION TRUST CLASSIFICATION IN THE UK

ABSTRACT: In this paper we argue that national accounting categories provide an inadequate basis for evaluating differences between public and private sector services. This is because accounting categories rely on economic concepts such as market price but do not take account of substantive public policy goals such as universality. The argument has important consequences for the structures and systems of delivery especially where nonprofit providers and social enterprise models are substituted for public bodies formerly integrated into the government's delivery system. Using an example taken from the UK's National Health Service, we show that the mechanisms for ensuring universality through redistribution are not sufficiently taken into account for classification purposes.     

Team Incentives and Organizational Form

Conventional wisdom regarding nonprofit firms is that the absence of a profit motive renders them inefficient. However, the costs and product quality realized by profit-taking firms is determined by how well those firms deal with a variety of internal incentive and information problems, and this should be equally true for nonprofits. This article analyzes the team incentive problem in nonprofit organizations. Holmstrom (1982) showed that the introduction of a budget-breaker into a team permitted the creation of incentives to provide efficient effort when it is otherwise impossible. A similar result obtains for a nonprofit team, but the role of principal differs from that found in profit-taking teams. It is shown that any of: donors, government regulators, or Trustees can fulfill this role in a nonprofit team. One implication of this is shown to be that nonprofit firms may indeed pay employees less than otherwise identical employees earn in identical jobs in profit-taking firms.     

Use of damage schedules in environmental valuation: The case of urban Singapore

Increasing concerns over environmental degradation have amplified the role of environmental economics and the valuation of non-pecuniary environmental resources as tools of analysis to facilitate the design of policies. To date, however, environmental valuation methods have continued to be unreliable, misleading and contentious as a guide to resource allocations and damage compensations. In this paper, a damage schedule is developed based on the scales of relative importance translated from people's judgments about values of various environmental damages or losses. The variance stable rank method is applied to the paired comparison responses to obtain the scale values as well as the importance of rankings. Statistical tests of significance are used to determine the level of the agreement among the survey respondents and the degree of correspondence between different respondent groups. This will determine the number of relative importance scales required to adequately represent the responses from all respondents. The scales of relative importance will then be translated into damage schedules. The setting for analysis is based on urban Singapore.