The Revealed Objective Functions of Nonprofit Firms
通过估计筹款的边际捐赠产出，推断非营利组织的目标函数。面板数据估计表明，福利、教育和艺术企业是服务最大化者，健康企业是预算最大化者，研究企业的目标无法确定。
Although assertions have often been made about the objectives underlying the behavior of nonprofit firms, there has been no empirical confirmation of these assertions. This article proposes a way to infer a nonprofit organization's objective function by estimating the marginal donative product of its fundraising. Panel data estimates derived by using Hildreth and Houck's (1968) random coefficients model, suggest that welfare, education, and arts firms are service that health firms are budget maximizers, and that the objective of research firms cannot be ascertained within the family of objective functions considered.