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Public good theories of the non-profit sector: Weisbrod revisited

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Abstract

Burton Weisbrod's 1975 article, Toward a theory of the voluntary non-profit sector in a three-sector economy, models non-profit organisations as suppliers of public goods which are undersupplied by government to heterogeneous populations. This article examines the implications, extensions and empirical tests of the Weisbrod theory. It also examines the theories of pure and impure altruism, the heterogeneity hypothesis, and the various ‘publicness’ indexes of non-profit output. The commonalities between the public good model and the trustworthiness model of non-profit organisations are also explored.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics Nelson A. Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the University at Albany, State University of New York, USA

    Bruce R. Kingma (Associate Professor with a joint appointment)

  2. School of Information Science and Policy Nelson A. Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the University at Albany, State University of New York, USA

    Bruce R. Kingma (Associate Professor with a joint appointment)

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  1. Bruce R. Kingma
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Correspondence to Bruce R. Kingma.

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He is also a Research Associate of the Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Case Western Reserve University.

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Kingma, B.R. Public good theories of the non-profit sector: Weisbrod revisited. Voluntas 8, 135–148 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02354191

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