Premium
The German Gemeinwirtschaftslehre : Implications for modern nonprofit economics
Author(s) -
Valentinov Vladislav
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
regulation and governance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.417
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1748-5991
pISSN - 1748-5983
DOI - 10.1111/j.1748-5991.2009.01050.x
Subject(s) - german , economics , nonprofit sector , constraint (computer aided design) , market failure , empirical research , public economics , political science , neoclassical economics , public administration , mechanical engineering , archaeology , engineering , history , philosophy , epistemology
This article examines the way modern nonprofit economics can be informed by the Gemeinwirtschaftslehre , a strand of public and nonprofit economics that was popular in German‐speaking countries until the 1980s. Despite its present decline, the Gemeinwirtschaftslehre yields a valuable implication that nonprofit firms address market failure by supplanting the pecuniary entrepreneurial motivation with a nonpecuniary one. In this article, this implication is used to reconsider two central and controversial issues in modern nonprofit economics: the rationale behind the nondistribution constraint in nonprofit firms, and the integration between the market failure and supply‐side theories of the nonprofit sector. The article concludes by discussing the emerging prospects for empirical research.