Do Socially Responsible Investors Have It All Wrong?

Fossil fuels divestment is a widely debated topic at many college campuses, including my own. The push, often led by students, to divest from fossil fuels companies is an example of the socially responsible investing (SRI) movement. SRI strategies seek to promote goals like environmental stewardship, diversity, and human rights through portfolio management, including the screening of companies involved with objectionable products or behaviors.

It seems intuitive that the endowment of a foundation of educational institution should not invest in a firm whose activities oppose the foundation's mission. Why would a charity that fights lung cancer invest in tobacco, for example? But in a recent Federal Reserve Board working paper, "Divest, Disregard, or Double Down?", Brigitte Roth Tran suggests that intuition may be exactly backwards. She explains that "if firm returns increase with activities the endowment combats, doubling down on the investment increases expected utility by aligning funding availability with need. I call this 'mission hedging.'"

Returning to the example of the lung-cancer-fighting charity, suppose that the charity is heavily invested in tobacco. If the tobacco industry does unexpectedly well, then the charity will get large returns on its investments precisely when its funding needs are greatest (because presumably tobacco use and lung cancer rates will be up).

Roth Tran uses the Capital Asset Pricing Model to show that this mission hedging strategy "increases expected utility when endowment managers boost portfolio weights on firms whose returns correlate with activities the foundation seeks to reduce." More specifically,

"foundations that do not account for covariance between idiosyncratic risk and marginal utility of assets will generally under-invest in high covariance assets. Because objectionable firms are more likely to have such covariance, firewall foundations will underinvest in these firms by disregarding the mission in the investment process. SRI foundations will tend to underinvest in these firms even more by avoiding them altogether."

Roth Tran acknowledges that there are a number of reasons that mission hedging is not the norm. First, the foundation may experience direct negative utility from investing in a firm it considers reprehensible-- or experience a "warm glow" from divesting from such a firm. Second, the foundation may worry that investing in an objectionable firm will hurt its fundraising efforts or reputation (if donors do not understand the benefits of mission hedging). Third, the foundation may believe that divestment will directly lower the levels of the objectionable activity, though this effect is likely to be very small. Roth Tran points out that student leaders of the Harvard fossil fuel divestment campaign acknowledged that the financial impact on fossil fuel companies would be negligible.

Cab Drivers, Preachers, and Economists' Wives

Lately I have been working on a Great Depression-era economic history paper to constitute one chapter of my dissertation. The practice of writing a history paper is highly enjoyable. It can send you deep into the (thankfully in my case mostly digital) archives. For younger scholars, it is one of the best ways to learn about and reflect on your chosen profession. This can sometimes be quite humorous.

Irving Fisher was a Yale professor and one of the best-known economists of the early 20th century. His weekly Business Page, the closest thing to an economics blog of the time, was widely syndicated in newspapers across the country. His modern day counterpart greatly praises his debt deflation theory, and deservedly so. In addition to good insights, Fisher had many good lines.

The best came at a meeting of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences in November 1933. Picture Fisher at the podium about to make the closing remarks for the meeting. He begins,

"It is more than fair of the presiding officer to give me not only the first word, but the last word."

(One of the other speakers was a United States Senator, by the way.) Maybe it doesn't take an economist to think this way, but it takes one to speak this way. This is just some relatively benign self-aggrandizement, and a good ego is always good for a good laugh. Another quote, from the 1971 Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, also made me laugh, but seemed less benign.

"Who among us [economists] has not listened politely to the bizarre theories of the Great Depression as proffered by cab drivers, preachers, and (worst of all) economists' wives? One simply learns to avoid cabs, churches, and home each time the Grapes of Wrath makes one of the film festivals or books by Studs Terkel about Huey P. Long make the best-seller lists."

Fisher only asserts his superiority to other economists and politicians, whereas this economist asserts economists' intellectual superiority to the public at large, or at least its female and service professional components. "Isn't it cute when our wives try to understand the economy? Aren't we great for being so polite to the poor dolts?"

Now, the vast majority of economists I know today have the utmost respect for their spouses' intellects. What we should avoid at all costs is a "polite" disregard of the intellect of the general public. Economists shouldn't "avoid cabs, churches, and home." Cabs, churches and home are the economy. (And I can think of one particular preacher whose vision of economics will not be ignored.) Economic policy would function more smoothly if more people understood it. In a democracy, people deserve the chance to understand the economy and economic policies that affect their lives. This is put really well by Alan Blinder and coauthors (2009), regarding monetary policy:

"It may be time to pay some attention to communication with the general public...In the end, it is the general public that gives central banks their democratic legitimacy, and hence their independence."

This is also why I really respect efforts like those of Annamaria Lusardi to teach economic and financial literacy to the public under the assumption that everyone is capable of understanding, so long as they are given the opportunity to learn.

Pope Benedict XVI on Crisis, Development, and Truth

Today, Pope Benedict XVI announced that he will resign from his ministry at the end of the month, citing declining strength in his advanced age. His Papacy began in 2005 and many of his written messages reflect upon the global economic and financial crisis that characterized the world to which he ministered. Most notably, his 2009 encyclical Caritas in veritate (Charity in Truth) is a direct response to the crisis, reflecting on poverty and development, moral aspects of economic life, human rights, environmental responsibility, and

other economic issues. The encyclical is fairly long, but I have selected some excerpts that may be of interest. First, a passage about the crisis and the political power of States (emphases are in the original):

Profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end that provides a sense both of how to produce it and how to make good use of it. Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty... It is true that growth has taken place, and it continues to be a positive factor that has lifted billions of people out of misery — recently it has given many countries the possibility of becoming effective players in international politics. Yet it must be acknowledged that this same economic growth has been and continues to be weighed down by malfunctions and dramatic problems, highlighted even further by the current crisis. This presents us with choices that cannot be postponed concerning nothing less than the destiny of man, who, moreover, cannot prescind from his nature. The technical forces in play, the global interrelations, the damaging effects on the real economy of badly managed and largely speculative financial dealing, large-scale migration of peoples, often provoked by some particular circumstance and then given insufficient attention, the unregulated exploitation of the earth's resources: all this leads us today to reflect on the measures that would be necessary to provide a solution to problems that are not only new in comparison to those addressed by Pope Paul VI, but also, and above all, of decisive impact upon the present and future good of humanity. The different aspects of the crisis, its solutions, and any new development that the future may bring, are increasingly interconnected, they imply one another, they require new efforts of holistic understanding and a new humanistic synthesis...The current crisis obliges us to re-plan our journey, to set ourselves new rules and to discover new forms of commitment, to build on positive experiences and to reject negative ones. The crisis thus becomes an opportunity for discernment, in which to shape a new vision for the future... 

In our own day, the State finds itself having to address the limitations to its sovereignty imposed by the new context of international trade and finance, which is characterized by increasing mobility both of financial capital and means of production, material and immaterial. This new context has altered the political power of States. Today, as we take to heart the lessons of the current economic crisis, which sees the State's public authorities directly involved in correcting errors and malfunctions, it seems more realistic to re-evaluate their role and their powers, which need to be prudently reviewed and remodelled so as to enable them, perhaps through new forms of engagement, to address the challenges of today's world. Once the role of public authorities has been more clearly defined, one could foresee an increase in the new forms of political participation, nationally and internationally, that have come about through the activity of organizations operating in civil society; in this way it is to be hoped that the citizens' interest and participation in the res publica will become more deeply rooted.

Here are a few more economically-relevant passages about development, global interdependence, institutions, consumerism, and a need for reform of the United Nations Organization.

The risk for our time is that the de facto interdependence of people and nations is not matched by ethical interaction of consciences and minds that would give rise to truly human development. Only in charity, illumined by the light of reason and faith, is it possible to pursue development goals that possess a more humane and humanizing value. The sharing of goods and resources, from which authentic development proceeds, is not guaranteed by merely technical progress and relationships of utility, but by the potential of love that overcomes evil with good (cf. Rom 12:21), opening up the path towards reciprocity of consciences and liberties. 

The Church does not have technical solutions to offer and does not claim “to interfere in any way in the politics of States.” She does, however, have a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance, for a society that is attuned to man, to his dignity, to his vocation. Without truth, it is easy to fall into an empiricist and sceptical view of life, incapable of rising to the level of praxis because of a lack of interest in grasping the values — sometimes even the meanings — with which to judge and direct it. Fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom (cf. Jn 8:32) and of the possibility of integral human development. For this reason the Church searches for truth, proclaims it tirelessly and recognizes it wherever it is manifested.  

If development were concerned with merely technical aspects of human life, and not with the meaning of man's pilgrimage through history in company with his fellow human beings, nor with identifying the goal of that journey, then the Church would not be entitled to speak on it...To regard development as a vocation is to recognize, on the one hand, that it derives from a transcendent call, and on the other hand that it is incapable, on its own, of supplying its ultimate meaning... 

Paul VI had a keen sense of the importance of economic structures and institutions, but he had an equally clear sense of their nature as instruments of human freedom. Only when it is free can development be integrally human; only in a climate of responsible freedom can it grow in a satisfactory manner. Besides requiring freedom, integral human development as a vocation also demands respect for its truth. The vocation to progress drives us to “do more, know more and have more in order to be more." But herein lies the problem: what does it mean “to be more”? Paul VI answers the question by indicating the essential quality of “authentic” development: it must be “integral, that is, it has to promote the good of every man and of the whole man...” 

Global interconnectedness has led to the emergence of a new political power, that of consumers and their associations. This is a phenomenon that needs to be further explored, as it contains positive elements to be encouraged as well as excesses to be avoided. It is good for people to realize that purchasing is always a moral — and not simply economic — act. Hence the consumer has a specific social responsibility, which goes hand-in- hand with the social responsibility of the enterprise. Consumers should be continually educated regarding their daily role, which can be exercised with respect for moral principles without diminishing the intrinsic economic rationality of the act of purchasing. In the retail industry, particularly at times like the present when purchasing power has diminished and people must live more frugally, it is necessary to explore other paths: for example, forms of cooperative purchasing like the consumer cooperatives that have been in operation since the nineteenth century, partly through the initiative of Catholics... 

In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth. One also senses the urgent need to find innovative ways of implementing the principle of the responsibility to protect and of giving poorer nations an effective voice in shared decision-making.