IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/11140.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Constraining Managers without Owners: Governance of the Not-for-Profit Enterprise

Author

Listed:
  • Mihir A. Desai
  • Robert J. Yetman

Abstract

In the absence of owners, how effective are the constraints imposed by the state in promoting effective firm governance? This paper develops state-level indices of the legal and reporting rules facing not-for-profits and examines the effects of these rules on not-for-profit behavior. Stronger non-distribution constraints are associated with greater charitable expenditures and foundation payouts while more stringent reporting requirements are associated with lower insider compensation. The paper also examines how governance influences an alternative metric of not-for-profit performance -- the provision of social insurance. Stronger governance measures are associated with intertemporal smoothing of resources and greater activity in response to negative economic shocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Mihir A. Desai & Robert J. Yetman, 2005. "Constraining Managers without Owners: Governance of the Not-for-Profit Enterprise," NBER Working Papers 11140, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11140
    Note: CF PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w11140.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James R. Hines Jr., 1999. "Non-Profit Business Activity and the Unrelated Business Income Tax," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 13, pages 57-84, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. "A Survey of Corporate Governance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(2), pages 737-783, June.
    3. Paul Gompers & Joy Ishii & Andrew Metrick, 2003. "Corporate Governance and Equity Prices," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 107-156.
    4. Edward L. Glaeser, 2003. "The Governance of Not-for-Profit Organizations," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number glae03-1.
    5. Hamermesh, Daniel S, 1982. "Social Insurance and Consumption: An Empirical Inquiry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(1), pages 101-113, March.
    6. Glaeser, Edward L. & Shleifer, Andrei, 2001. "Not-for-profit entrepreneurs," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 99-115, July.
    7. Cochrane, John H, 1991. "A Simple Test of Consumption Insurance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(5), pages 957-976, October.
    8. Jonathan Gruber, 1994. "The Consumption Smoothing Benefits of Unemployment Insurance," NBER Working Papers 4750, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Alan J. Auerbach & Daniel R. Feenberg, 2000. "The Significance of Federal Taxes as Automatic Stabilizers," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 37-56, Summer.
    10. Pauly, Mark V & Redisch, Michael, 1973. "The Not-For-Profit Hospital as a Physicians' Cooperative," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(1), pages 87-99, March.
    11. Gruber, Jonathan, 1997. "The Consumption Smoothing Benefits of Unemployment Insurance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(1), pages 192-205, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Core, John E. & Guay, Wayne R. & Verdi, Rodrigo S., 2006. "Agency problems of excess endowment holdings in not-for-profit firms," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 307-333, September.
    2. Gregory O. Jobome, 2006. "Public Funding, Governance and Passthrough Efficiency in Large UK Charities," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(1), pages 43-59, January.
    3. Spiros Bougheas & Alessia Isopi & Trudy Owens, 2012. "How do Donors Allocate Funds to NGOs? Evidence from Uganda," Discussion Papers 12/08, University of Nottingham, CREDIT.
    4. Carolyn J. Cordery & Dalice Sim & Tony Zijl & Gary Monroe, 2017. "Differentiated regulation: the case of charities," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 57(1), pages 131-164, March.
    5. Dietz Nathan & Barber Putnam & Lott Cindy & Shelly Mary, 2017. "Exploring the Relationship between State Charitable Solicitation Regulations and Fundraising Performance," Nonprofit Policy Forum, De Gruyter, vol. 8(2), pages 183-204, September.
    6. Hofmann, Mary Ann & McSwain, Dwayne, 2013. "Financial disclosure management in the nonprofit sector: A framework for past and future research," Journal of Accounting Literature, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 61-87.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thomas J. Kniesner & James P. Ziliak, 2002. "Tax Reform and Automatic Stabilization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(3), pages 590-612, June.
    2. Newton, Ashley N., 2015. "Executive compensation, organizational performance, and governance quality in the absence of owners," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 195-222.
    3. Lawrence Christiano & Mathias Trabandt & Karl Walentin, 2021. "Involuntary Unemployment and the Business Cycle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 39, pages 26-54, January.
    4. Rendon Sílvio, 2006. "Job Search And Asset Accumulation Under Borrowing Constraints ," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 47(1), pages 233-263, February.
    5. Lawrence Christiano & Mathias Trabandt & Karl Walentin, 2021. "Involuntary Unemployment and the Business Cycle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 39, pages 26-54, January.
    6. Browning, Martin & Crossley, Thomas F., 2008. "The long-run cost of job loss as measured by consumption changes," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 145(1-2), pages 109-120, July.
    7. Torben Andersen, 2005. "Is there a Role for an Active Fiscal Stabilization Policy?," CESifo Working Paper Series 1447, CESifo.
    8. Paul Gertler & Jonathan Gruber, 2002. "Insuring Consumption Against Illness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 51-70, March.
    9. Raj Chetty & Amy Finkelstein, 2012. "Social Insurance: Connecting Theory to Data," NBER Working Papers 18433, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Borjas, George J., 2004. "Food insecurity and public assistance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(7-8), pages 1421-1443, July.
    11. Albert H. Choi, 2015. "Non-Profit Status and Relational Sanctions: Commitment to Quality through Repeat Interactions and Organizational Choice," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(4).
    12. Dalton, Christina Marsh & Warren, Patrick L., 2016. "Cost versus control: Understanding ownership through outsourcing in hospitals," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 1-15.
    13. Raj Chetty & Emmanuel Saez, 2010. "Optimal Taxation and Social Insurance with Endogenous Private Insurance," NBER Chapters, in: Income Taxation, Trans-Atlantic Public Economics Seminar (TAPES), pages 85-114, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. 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.
    15. Raj Chetty, 2006. "A Bound on Risk Aversion Using Labor Supply Elasticities," NBER Working Papers 12067, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Raj Chetty & Adam Looney, 2007. "Income Risk and the Benefits of Social Insurance: Evidence from Indonesia and the United States," NBER Chapters, in: Fiscal Policy and Management in East Asia, pages 99-121, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Hamish Low & Costas Meghir & Luigi Pistaferri, 2010. "Wage Risk and Employment Risk over the Life Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1432-1467, September.
    18. Eric M. Engen & Jonathan Gruber, 1995. "Unemployment Insurance and Precautionary Saving," NBER Working Papers 5252, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Martin Browning & Thomas F. Crossley & Guglielmo Weber, 2003. "Asking consumption questions in general purpose surveys," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(491), pages 540-567, November.
    20. Engen, Eric M. & Gruber, Jonathan, 2001. "Unemployment insurance and precautionary saving," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 545-579, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L30 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - General
    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General
    • H40 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - General
    • K20 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - General

    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:nbr:nberwo:11140. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 bibliographic 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.