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The Puzzle Of Short-Termism, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

From the Introduction: When pondering the question of the “sustainable corporation,” as we did in this symposium, one of the intractable problems is the nature of the corporation to produce externalities. By noting this characteristic, I am not making a moral point but an economic one. The nature of the firm is to create financial wealth by producing goods and services for profit; without regulatory or contractual limits, the firm has every incentive to externalize costs onto those whose interests are not included in the firm’s current financial calculus. In fact, because of the corporation’s tendency to create benefits for …