shareholder value

Managers Should Satisfy Only the Ethically Permissible Preferences of Shareholders

Oliver Hart and Luigi Zingales have proposed a revision to the dominant model of the objective of the firm, most famously defended...

How a Wave of Corporate Takeovers Ushered In the Gospel of Shareholder Value

In an excerpt from his new book, Ages of American Capitalism, economic historian Jonathan Levy explains how "financiers blew up the postwar...

Public’s Perception of Large Corporations Has Direct Impact on the Public Support of Corporate Bailouts

A new Stigler Center working paper finds that the likelihood of someone signing an online petition or contacting their US senators to...

Friedman’s Legacy: From Doctrine to Theorem

Friedman was more right than his detractors claim and more wrong than his supporters would like us to believe. However, after 50...

Bringing Ethics Back to Friedman’s Call to Purpose for the Next 50 Years

Fifty years ago, Friedman compellingly presented his argument for shareholder primacy. But as currently implemented, shareholder primacy threatens the unifying purposes that...

Milton Friedman and the Need for Justice

Milton Friedman predicated his shareholder value maximization credo on the strong implicit and explicit assumptions that the rules of society protect stakeholders...

Shareholder Value and Social Responsibility Are Not At Odds

Being socially responsible can, and frequently does, make good business sense. There are plenty of opportunities for companies to do well by...

A Challenge for Stakeholder Capitalism: Solving the Paradoxes of Voting

If corporations are to maximize shareholder welfare, managers need to discover what shareholders value; political theory shows how difficult this can be.

Corporations Are Governance Mechanisms, Not Shareholder Toys

Milton Friedman’s shareholder credo is simple and catchy but has shaky foundations. Corporate directors and officers are not agents of shareholders and...

Beyond Friedman’s Doctrine: The True Purpose of the Business Corporation

The pandemic and the renewed focus on inequality and injustice arising in the wake of the death of George Floyd have accelerated...

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How Many Banks Are at Risk of Insolvency Right Now?

Given the recent banking turmoil and failure of SVB and Signature and issues in First Republic, it is important to understand the...

The Challenges of Regulating Disinformation

In response to rising concerns about political disinformation, governments have introduced a slew of interventions. Federico Vaccari warns in new research that...

India’s Evolving Industrial Policy Is Critical for Realizing Its Development Vision

Industrial policy was once so out of fashion that it was jokingly called “the policy that shall not be named.” Now it’s...

Can Twitter Be a Force for Good? Social Media Helps Curb Corporate Misconduct

Collective shaming on social media is crucial in reducing corporate misbehavior — and society would be significantly worse off without watchdog platforms.

The Historical Cost of Populism

Most work on populism has investigated the reasons why voters choose populist leaders and governments. In new research, Moritz Schularick,  Christoph Trebesch,...