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.     

论公共部门合理边界的决定——兼论混合公共部门的价格形成机制

本文从中国公共部门(主要是提供私人品的公共部门)实际存在的问题出发,研究了其中存在的政府失灵,揭示了其根源在于政府目标的错位,在于缺乏公共需求对于公共供给的决定机制和信息互动反馈机制。由此导致了以政府目标为基础的公共部门的边界经常是模糊不清的。因此,我们从理论上提出了社会效益目标最优化所决定的公共部门边界的基本命题,以此作为评价政府行为是否合理的依据。由于公共品与私人品的边界不清还必然导致混合公共部门的价格扭曲,在合理界定两者的前提下,通过不同约束条件和不同范围内的放开行业准入,引进多元化的竞争方式,能够增加公共供给和缓解供给不足,形成合理价格的均衡基础。     

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.     

DEFINING AND MEASURING THE PUBLIC SECTOR: SOME INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS

The public sector is defined here to include government plus public enterprises. Historically, economists and statisticians have been more concerned with its separate components than with the public sector as a whole, but it is suggested that the public sector may be an appropriate concept for studying several current problems of economic policy. While there is general agreement as to what constitutes government, countries have differing views about what makes an enterprise public. Differences in country definitions of public enterprises are identified as one of the main problems in making international comparisons for the public sector. Statistics are presented for up to 16 OECD countries on the share of the public sector in total final demand, value added, employment, and net lending. It is argued that there is rarely a unique answer to the question “How big is the public sector?” For most countries judicious selection of data and careful definition will lead to different conclusions about the size and growth of the public sector. Because of the lack of data, it is not possible to analyse public sectors in developing countries in the same detail as OECD countries. The evidence available suggests that while public sectors are about the same size in both OECD and developing countries, public enterprises play a more important role in the latter.     

Employment and Wages in the Private and Local Government Sectors in a Centralized Fiscal System

This paper discusses the interaction between the local government and private sector in an institutional context consistent with a centralized fiscal system. Under decentralized wage setting in the private sector, the effects of shocks in the two sectors depend on whether private and local public goods are substitutes or complements in the union utility function. Higher wage markup in the local government sector unambiguously decreases government output while the effect on private sector employment is ambiguous. Higher income taxes have ambiguous effects on local government output. Shocks in the private sector can be reinforced through feedback effects from the local government sector. A shift from decentralized to centralized wage setting in the private sector reduces wages and increases employment in both sectors.     

EXPERIENCE OF PRIVATIZATION IN EASTERN GERMANY*

ABSTRACT^**: The analysis of the experience of privatization in Eastern Germany shows that the boundaries between the private and public sectors will become increasingly blurred, with the public sector becoming more like the private sector. One may also expect that employment will fall and productivity greatly increase. The legislature's urge to regulate everything will ultimately subside but the public sector will continue to be of vital importance for the economy as a whole. A modernized public sector will be able to deploy its services to make an important contribution to economic growth and employment.     

公私伙伴关系的定位与调适

供给主体单一会导致公共服务质量低下,应利用公私部门间各自优势,引入市场机制,理顺公共部门与私营部门间关系,构建政府、市场与社会三者间共同参与公共服务供给的新模式,以期提升公共服务供给水平。     

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.     

Profiling hospital utilization in a mixed public–private system

While there is an extensive body of literature on the demand for hospital services, little is known about the interaction between public and private hospitals in a mixed system. In this article, we (1) apply latent class analysis to identify distinct subgroups of patients who use the hospital market differently, (2) characterize each patient type by their personal characteristics and (3) link the patient type to future hospital admissions. We apply our analysis to individual-level longitudinal patient data from Australia, focusing on three popular procedures that are performed in both public and private hospitals. We find 4–5 patient types. The most common types use either a public or a private hospital almost exclusively and absorb a moderate level of hospital resources. The severe types represent 13–17% of patients. The type which uses both sectors makes up 10–20% and tends to have private health insurance coverage. The patient types are predictive of prospective utilizations as we find that patients tend to be admitted to the sector they have used in the past. By revealing how patients use coexisting public and private hospitals, our results have direct implications on health resource financing and allocations.     

Infrastructure investment and Canadian manufacturing productivity

This paper examines the relationship between Canadian public infrastructure and private output using a Constant Elasticity and Substitution-Translog (CES-TL) cost model to describe the interaction of the public and private sectors.

We find public capital a substitute for private capital within the Canadian manufacturing sector. Additionally, the services of public capital enhance the productivity of private capital. Canadian manufacturing costs are characterized by economies of scale, indicating that less than optimal plant sizes dominated Canadian manufacturing sector during the study period. Advances in disembodied technical progress are also indicated.     

非营利组织与我国住房多元供给体系的建设

造成我国当前住房形势严峻的主要症结之一是民间合作性质的非营利组织参与住房体系的运行没有得到足够重视,没有构建多元住房供给体系的认识和思路.而在发达市场经济国家,住房协会等非营利组织早已成为国民住房问题的重要参与主体,与政府、私营企业共同构筑起多元化、多层次、多渠道的住房供应体系.对于我国而言,积极调动民间力量、引导和扶持社会组织参与住房改革事业,将是破解住房困境、解决居住民生问题的有效途径.     

Demand for collective goods in private nonprofit markets: Can fundraising expenditures help overcome free-rider behavior?

Economic theory ascribes the primary role in the provision of public goods to government. This emphasis on government overlooks the role of the not-for-profit sector in providing collective-type goods. In this paper we seek to determine the factors influencing charitable contributions to private nonprofit organizations by estimating a demand function for the output of these collective-good providers. Specifically, we test the hypothesis that voluntary giving is responsive to conventional market variables such as advertising expenditures, price, and quality. Overall, the results are strongly supportive.     

Understanding nonprofit social enterprises: Lessons from Austrian economics

There is a large literature on the role of nonprofit enterprises within society. This literature typically views nonprofits as either substitutes for government enterprises or complements to, and even necessary extensions of, these government efforts. While this literature has improved our understanding of the role and importance of nonprofit social enterprises, how social entrepreneurs identify opportunities, allocate resources, and adapt to changing circumstances has been relatively underexplored. Efforts to fill this gap within Austrian economics have categorized nonprofits and identified the limitations of calculation and coordination in the nonprofit sector and the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful nonprofit enterprises. This strand of literature focuses on the differences between economic calculation in for-profit enterprises and decision making in nonprofit enterprises. We argue that another meaningful aspect to determining the ability of nonprofit enterprises to coordinate plans is whether they are structured more like private enterprises and public enterprises. These insights from Austrian economics shed light on why some nonprofits are more effective than others at achieving social goals.

     

Informality,public employment and employment protection in developing countries

This paper proposes an equilibrium matching model for developing countries’ labor markets where the interaction between public, formal private and informal private sectors are taken into account. Theoretical analysis shows that gains from reforms aiming at liberalizing formal labor markets can be annulled by shifts in the public sector employment and wage policies. Since the public sector accounts for a substantial share of employment in developing countries, this approach is crucial to understand the main labor market outcomes of such economies. Wages offered by the public sector increase the outside option value of the workers during the bargaining processes in the formal and informal sectors. It becomes more profitable for workers to search on-the-job, in order to move to these more attractive and more stable types of jobs. The public sector therefore acts as an additional tax for the formal private firms. Using data on workers’ flows from Egypt, we show empirically and theoretically that the liberalization of labor markets plays against informal employment by increasing the profitability, and hence job creations, of formal jobs. The latter effect is however dampened or even sometimes nullified by the increase of the offered wages in the public sector observed at the same time.     

Public sector and economic growth: the Greek experience

Over the past two decades there has been an increase in the relative size of the public sector, accompanied by a decline in the growth performance of the Greek economy. In an attempt to highlight the contribution of the government size to growth, an analytical framework is developed, incorporating the possibility that marginal factor productivities are not equal in the public and private sectors. Econometric analysis utilizing this framework points to a negative relationship between government size and economic growth. This seems to derive, in part, from intersectoral diseconomies generated by the growing share of deft-financed government activities.     

Fiscal Adjustment, The Real Exchange Rate and Australia's External Imbalance

This article examines issues of relevance to Australia's external imbalance. We investigate the sharp fiscal consolidation over the past five years and examine why it did not reduce the current account deficit. We show that a disproportionate part of the fiscal consolidation was achieved by cutting public investment spending, and we discuss some of the negative consequences of such cuts. We compare the macroeconomic behaviour of six OECD countries which have recently increased net government savings. It has been a common experience that an increase in net government saving has not been associated with a reduction in the current account deficit. For Australia, we establish that the link between fiscal consolidation and a smaller current account deficit was severed by a private sector investment surge. This leads us to examine the behaviour of the relative price critical to the allocation of this investment between the traded and non-traded sectors - the real exchange rate. Over the medium term, we argue that a substantial real depreciation is necessary as part of the adjustment required to stabilise the ratio of net external liabilities to GDP.     

PUBLIC SECTOR STATISTICS FOR THE UNITED KINGDOM

This paper describes the composition of the public sector in the United Kingdom and traces the development and contribution to the economy of the three main sub-sectors-central government, local government and public corporations—over the past thirty years. Relevant data for output, employment, fixed capital formation and national wealth set the public sector into perspective with the economy as a whole and illustrate how its share of human and other resources has changed over the years. While all four measures show the public sector share of the total to have been around 30 percent in 1980, historically the changes have moved very differently. The slow, but fairly steady, increase in the share of employment and output contrasts with very marked changes in the other two measures. Although public sector fixed investment nearly doubled in real terms between 1950 and 1980 its share of total investment declined from 48 to 31 percent, a much smaller share being taken by dwellings, electricity supply and the railways. In terms of the share of national wealth the public sector moved from a state of indebtedness to the rest of the economy in the fifties and sixties to a position of holding nearly one third of the value of tangible and financial assets in the late seventies. A small part of the paper considers the international dimension, but because few other countries use the concept of a public sector, this section examines only the relationship between total tax revenue and GDP in a number of countries and employment in general government. The problems of determining the boundary of the public and private sectors occurs most frequently at the interface between public corporations and private enterprises; the rules for deciding classification are set out in so far as they can be specified. The last sections of the paper put the statistics into their policy context and consider the value of public sector aggregates. The conclusion is that a general case cannot be made to justify assembling public sector aggregates for all countries; the need will be determined by the economic policies being pursued in a particular country. Although the United Kingdom gives considerable prominence to a public sector financial aggregate, the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement, the functions of the public corporations and the rest of the public sector are so disparate that consolidated accounts for the public sector are no longer prepared.     

Wage differentials by sector and gender: a quantile analysis for the Spanish case

This paper analyses existing wage differentials between workers in the public and private sectors and by gender in Spain. This analysis is run throughout the entire earnings distribution and observed wage differentials are decomposed into a part explained by differences in productive characteristics and a part due to differences in returns to such characteristics. Our results show that public sector workers tend to earn higher wages than private employees, although most of this sector wage gap is due to better public workers’ productive characteristics. A wage premium in favour of men is also found in both the public and private sectors, with the gender wage gap greater at the top of the earnings distribution.     

基于主成分分析的非营利组织绩效模糊综合评价

在比较和分析现有的组织绩效评价模型的基础上,依据平衡计分卡,结合文献资料、预试和访谈资料,初步遴选出非营利组织绩效评价指标;进一步通过主成分分析,构建了包括4个主成分因子的非营利组织绩效评价指标体系。利用该评价体系对4家非营利组织的绩效进行模糊评价。结果表明,当前我国多数非营利组织的绩效水平偏低,以顾客为导向、提升内部运营效率应成为改善非营利组织绩效的工作重点。