Chapter 6: The Nature of Public Assets: A Response to Mautz

In a thought-provoking editorial,¹ Robert Mautz points out that we need to look seriously at the nature of nonprofit organizations, and accounting for them, before applying concepts developed in the commercial sector where they do not fit. In particular, he encourages us to think innovatively about the nature of assets in the nonprofit sector. Mautz returns to the theme of an earlier article² in which he argued that, because property such as monuments, roads and scenic reserves result in cash outflows (in the form of expenditures on maintenance and custodianship) rather than cash inflows, there is a case for viewing them as liabilities rather than as assets.