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Published in: Social Indicators Research 2/2017

25-03-2016

Costs and Economies of Scale at Not-for-Profit Organizations: The Case of the Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Barcelos Between 2002 and 2013

Authors: Paulo Mourão, Cristiana Enes

Published in: Social Indicators Research | Issue 2/2017

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Abstract

In this work, we intend to evaluate the triangular sustainability of not-for-profit organizations, putting a special emphasis on the study of economies of scale. After a collection of raw data from the historical archives of the institution (a ‘Santa Casa da Misericordia de Barcelos’), we constructed a panel database. Using this database, we estimated cobb-douglas costs functions, by applying fixed and random effects. We found that Portuguese institutions as the one here studied (belonging to the Portuguese Social Economy and as a representative of the Holy Houses of Mercy) exhibit economies of scale, which ask for a renewed perspective of the sector by the regulating entities.

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Appendix
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Footnotes
1
It is important to notice that, as statistically requested, the main independent variable (lutente) is not highly correlated with the input variables (coefficients lower than 0.70) neither with the prices of input (Amsler et al. 2014). If there were coefficients higher than 0.70 there could appear problems of endogeneity. For confirming the absence of problems of endogeneity among the number of users, the input variables, and the prices of inputs we ran Hausman tests considering as instruments the product between inputs and their prices; and we also got p values lower than 1 % (null hypothesis related to the statistically significance of the used instruments).
 
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Metadata
Title
Costs and Economies of Scale at Not-for-Profit Organizations: The Case of the Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Barcelos Between 2002 and 2013
Authors
Paulo Mourão
Cristiana Enes
Publication date
25-03-2016
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Published in
Social Indicators Research / Issue 2/2017
Print ISSN: 0303-8300
Electronic ISSN: 1573-0921
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-016-1315-4

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