El sector fundacional en España : la información económico-financiera. Un modelo para evaluar la eficiencia en el logro de sus fines.

Abstract

The reason for this Thesis is, given the importance that we believe the foundation sector has in Spain, to perform a legal-economic-financial study, to show their main scales and their importance as a generator of employment, culminating in a study to evaluate the performance of 260 care, educational and cultural foundations by applying a non-parametric technique namely Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). This technique, developed by Charnes et. al., (1978), can determine the efficiency frontier of best practices of the evaluated units using a mathematical optimization model, and it also allows us to study the productivity change using the Total Factor Productivity Malmquist Index based on the DEA methodology (Fare et al., 1994). The study is complemented by a programme efficiency analysis (Charnes et al., 1981) and a two-stage DEA analysis using a logit regression model to evaluate the possible association of relevant covariates in the foundation (nonprofit) sector, namely: size, liquidity, debt, antiquity, volunteers, surplus, endowments and size of governing structure. This enables us to compare with the performance of these organisations as previously calculated. Under this motivation and encouragement to deepen in the study of the foundation sector in Spain, in this Thesis we propose a set of basic objectives which are reached along the seven chapters in which the study is structured: the first chapter begins with the aim of approaching the conceptualization of the Third Sector and the role that foundations hold in this area; the second chapter pursues to make a study of such organisations from a legal perspective; the third one aims to develop and analyse the needs of economic and financial information of foundations; in the fourth chapter the goal is to analyse the economic activities of the foundations through which the general interest purposes of the organisation are achieved; in the fifth one the concepts of efficiency and productivity are analysed and the methodology in use is justified and developed; the sixth chapter analyses the results of the model of efficiency, and finally, the seventh chapter summerises the most important conclusions of the investigation. http://repositorio.bib.upct.es/dspace/