Nobelovec Oliver Hart iz Harvarda in Luigi Zingales, eden najbolj uglednih finančnih teoretikov, sicer iz poslovne šole Booth na univerzi v Chicagu, sta se lotila vprašanja, ki ga je odprl ekonomski zgodovinar Adam Tooze iz univerze Columbia v zvezi z zahtevami pro-palestinskih študentskih protestnikov na elitnih ameriških univerzah. Študentski protestniki so zahtevali, da uprave njihovih univerz divestirajo (umaknejo svoje naložbe) iz podjetij, ki so povezana z omogočanjem izraelskega masakra v Gazi.

Hart in Zingales si zastavita temeljno vprašanje: Ali je treba naložbene odločitve sprejemati brez etičnega premisleka? Ugotavljata, da če bi sledili filozofiji Miltona Friedmana in “teoremu ločitve” finančnih koristi od nefinančnih, lahko univerze pozabijo na moralni kodeks, saj bi morala biti zanje na prvem mestu maksimizacija finančnih donosov. Toda to bi pomenilo tudi, da univerze potem ne bi smele imeti dvojnih meril, recimo, da ne investirajo v delnice podjetij, ki izkoriščajo delo otrok, zlorabljajo delo manjšin, onesnažujejo okolje ipd. In še več, univerze bi potem pri svojih naložbenih načrtih morale pozabiti na ESG standarde (družbena odgovornost na podlagi okoljskih, družbenih in upravljalskih kriterijev).

Torej, kot ugotavljata Hart in Zingales: če univerze uporabljajo etična merila pri eni vrsti naložb, se morajo tega držati tudi pri vseh ostalih naložbah. In zaključita: “Ne glede na to, ali se kdo strinja ali ne strinja s protestniki glede Gaze, imajo ti prav glede ene stvari: živeti bi morali po vrednotah, v katere verjamemo.”

Predstavljam si, da finančni donatorji na univerzah Harvard in Chicago niso bili prav veseli tega njunega zapisa.

Nevertheless, whether you agree with her political position or not, Soda raises the following fundamental question: Should investment decisions be made without ethical consideration? 

The conventional view, often associated with Milton Friedman, is that they should. Regardless of your non-financial goals, you always want to maximize your financial return, because the proceeds from that increased return allow you to better achieve your non-financial goals. This “Separation Theorem”—financial goals can be partitioned from non-financial ones—is the stated or unstated reason why university endowments are run the way they are. 

The theorem is very convenient, not least because it makes life easy for endowment managers. But as we showed in a 2017 paper, it is wrong. Consider a decision by Harvard University about whether to divest from companies that produce sneakers with child labor or that rely on animal testing for their beauty products. Doing so would reduce Harvard’s investment return, and as a consequence, Harvard would have less money to spend on cutting-edge research. In some cases, the social value of the foregone research will be less than the costs of being associated with the use of child labor or animal testing, in which case Harvard should divest. But in other cases, the calculation will go the other way, in which case the university shouldn’t divest. A careful balancing of the costs and benefits is required: One can’t simply assume the answer.

The Separation Theorem buries moral questions beneath technocratic ones. This has allowed universities to be secretive about how they invest their money, because they don’t feel any need to be accountable to alumni, faculty, and students for the social and political consequences of their investments. Once one recognizes the limitations of the theorem, however, the case for transparency becomes strong. Just as some consumers want to know that their sneakers aren’t produced by child labor, so students have the right to know that their lab equipment and fellowship aren’t financed by selling opioids or guns.

Transparency doesn’t imply that a small minority of very vocal students has the right to decide where universities invest or how they engage with the companies they invest in. First, all the various constituencies, from the other students to the faculty and the alumni, need to be listened to. Second, the costs need to be factored in. Students need to be confronted with moral questions, such as whether Columbia being associated with defense contractors is worth the tuition discount.

Reasonable people can disagree about the answers. Yet investment decisions can’t be left in the hands of professionals who are compensated based on financial performance. That is tantamount to abandoning any moral values in the name of the god Mammon, something very unfitting for higher-education institutions that should lead by example. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the Gaza protesters, they are right about one thing: We should live by the values we believe in.

Vir: Oliver Hart & Luigi Zingales, CompactMag