FEB
This paper provides survey evidence on higher purpose for individuals and organizations and develops a theoretical model consistent with the evidence. The survey of 1,019 individuals in the U.S. sought to learn about their...
The firms listed on the stock market in aggregate contribute less to total non-farm employment and GDP now than in the 1970s. A major reason for this development is the decline of manufacturing and the growth of the service economy as...
This paper frames a normative theory of stewardship engagement by large institutional investors and asset managers in terms of their theory of investment management – “Modern Portfolio Theory” -- which describes investors as...
We construct measures of firms' beliefs about climate regulation, plans for future abatement, and current emissions mitigation from responses to the Carbon Disclosure Project. These measures vary in a pronounced, distinctive...
We examine the extent that unemployment insurance (UI) reduces employee-shareholder conflicts of interest in target firms and affects takeover outcomes. A 10% increase in UI level raises takeover likelihoods by 15- 26% over the...
Many companies have recently been following the so-called corporate purpose concept that is recommended by leading management scholars. To this end, they identify a raison d'être for their enterprise that goes beyond mere profit...
For centuries, our systems of banking, money, and payments have been legally and institutionally intertwined. The fact that these three—theoretically distinct—systems have been bundled together so...
Recent research shows that a high wage gap between managers and workers identifies better-performing firms, but the stock market does not seem to price this information. In this paper, we show that not all investors neglect pay...
With the pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 raging around the world, many countries’ economies are at a crucial juncture. The COVID-19 external shock to the economy has the potential to affect corporate governance...
After fitting a topic model to 40,927 COVID-19-related paragraphs in 3,581 earnings calls over the period January 22 to April 30, 2020, we obtain firm-level measures of exposure and response related to COVID-19 for 2,894 U.S. firms. We...
Over more than forty years, the European Union (formerly the European Community) has enacted a large number of directives aimed at harmonising company law rules across Member States. Nevertheless, differences across Member States...
Prof. Oliver Hart
Nobel Laureate, ECGI Fellow, and Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Department of Economics, Harvard University
The 2020 Wallenberg Lecture, delivered by Nobel Laureate and ECGI Fellow, Prof. Oliver Hart, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Department of Economics, Harvard University. The title of the lecture was: “The Relative Effectiveness of......