Resumen de Non-profit Firm Models and Museum Demand Estimation
A version of Hansmann (1981) economic model of non profit institutions is analyzed to derive museums pricing schedules. These are paired with demand for museum attendance derived from utility maximisation by heterogeneous consumers that care for museum characteristics, in order to provide an empirical strategy to identify museum demand based on the usual micro database including museum prices, attendance and characteristics, as well as socio demographic indicators of hosting towns. Following the empirical literature we address the endogeneity of observed prices and the large number of zero price observations. To tackle them we propose an instrumental variable estimation, while also using selection correction techniques. The model is estimated using data from the 2007 Census of Uruguayan Museums. We do not find a significant effect of price on attendance.
