Frederick Alexander is Founder of The Shareholder Commons; Holly Ensign-Barstow is Director of Stakeholder Governance & Policy at B Lab; and Lenore Palladino is Assistant Professor at the School of Public Policy and the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. This post is based on a recent paper authored by Mr. Alexander, Ms. Ensign-Barstow, Ms. Palladino, and Andrew Kassoy. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance by Lucian A. Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita (discussed on the Forum here); For Whom Corporate Leaders Bargain by Lucian A. Bebchuk, Kobi Kastiel, and Roberto Tallarita (discussed on the Forum here); and Toward Fair and Sustainable Capitalism by Leo E. Strine, Jr (discussed on the Forum here).
Capital Market Policies for the 21st Century
The U.S. capital markets have failed to create an inclusive and equitable economy or durable prosperity because they are built atop policies formulated over the last 150 years. These policies fail to account for (1) the injustice that naturally accrues in an unregulated free market (e.g., the lottery of birth), and (2) the planetary boundaries we are now approaching. This post proposes new legislative and regulatory reforms that promote capital stewardship to preserve market mechanisms in a more equitable economic system designed to create justice and ecological balance.
The policies we propose will create a foundation for U.S. markets that channel resources toward durable productivity and equity for workers. With these policies in place, investors will have the tools to create sustainability guardrails for company behavior that will distinguish between efficient, innovative profits that benefit us all and profits derived from negative-sum behaviors that put critical systems at risk and continue to exploit communities.
