IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aerins/v1y2019i2p241-56.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Divest, Disregard, or Double Down? Philanthropic Endowment Investments in Objectionable Firms

Author

Listed:
  • Brigitte Roth Tran

Abstract

How much, if at all, should an endowment invest in a firm whose activities run counter to the charitable missions the endowment funds? I offer the first model characterizing this type of investment decision. I introduce a strategy called "mission hedging," where—in contrast to traditional socially responsible investing—foundations may benefit from skewing investment toward the objectionable firm in order to align funding availability with need. I characterize the trade-offs driving foundation investment decisions. By leveraging the idiosyncratic firm risk typically diversified away in profit-maximizing portfolios, foundations may find that bad actors provide good opportunities to hedge mission-specific risks.

Suggested Citation

  • Brigitte Roth Tran, 2019. "Divest, Disregard, or Double Down? Philanthropic Endowment Investments in Objectionable Firms," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 241-256, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aerins:v:1:y:2019:i:2:p:241-56
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/aeri.20180347
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20180347
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/content/file?id=10515
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20180347.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mathias S. Kruttli & Brigitte Roth Tran & Sumudu W. Watugala, 2019. "Pricing Poseidon: Extreme Weather Uncertainty and Firm Return Dynamics," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2019-054, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    2. Michael Donadelli & Patrick Grüning & Steffen Hitzemann, 2019. "Understanding Macro and Asset Price Dynamics During the Climate Transition," Bank of Lithuania Discussion Paper Series 18, Bank of Lithuania.
    3. Steven D. Baker & Burton Hollifield & Emilio Osambela, 2022. "Asset Prices and Portfolios with Externalities [Pricedetermination in the EU ETS market: theory and econometric analysis with market fundamentals]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 26(6), pages 1433-1468.
    4. Marcelo Ochoa & Matthias Paustian & Laura Wilcox, 2022. "Do Sustainable Investment Strategies Hedge Climate Change Risks? Evidence from Germany's Carbon Tax," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2022-073, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • L31 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Nonprofit Institutions; NGOs; Social Entrepreneurship
    • M14 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Corporate Culture; Diversity; Social Responsibility

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aerins:v:1:y:2019:i:2:p:241-56. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.