This Week in ESG and Impact Investing

Alternative Investing Summit - 5-7 December, 2010. The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel, Dana Point, California The Alternative Investing Summit will bring together trustees and representatives of institutions as well as money managers and consultants to explore the roles of alternative opportunities and strategies. Participants and delegates of this alternative investing conference will investigate a range of critical investment issues, including discussion of the risks and benefits involving private equity, investigating the risks and rewards involved with hedge funds, examining means of cutting costs associated with implementation of absolute returns strategies, reviewing the future of commodities and surveying the landscape of emerging international markets. The label "alternative" describes a nebulous investment class to many investors, especially those in the institutional world who have strict ethical and fiduciary obligations to their organizations. However, pursuing a

In the posting below, CIR Intern Angela Liu, (GWU, MSF, 2011) compares two recent papers on CSR. A web article from Ioannis Ioannou, Assistant Professor of Strategic and International Management at London Business School, asks " Is there a link between a company's social responsibility and its profitability?" The second study reviewed is the Boston College 2010 Corpora te Social Responsibility Index. A Comparison of CSR Methodologies Both studies focus on how to measure and value corporate social responsibility (CSR). Both show how difficult it is to precisely measure the exact economic value of CSR, but both also use methods that highlight the intangible value that social responsibility might actually bring to a given firm. External and Internal Aspects The research from the London Business School mainly focuses on the internal aspects of CSR. The authors have collected data since 1990. They use this data to study the key ways that a firm can transfer CSR informatio

According to the Fed, "To promote a stronger pace of economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at levels consistent with its mandate, the Committee decided today to expand its holdings of securities. The Committee will maintain its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its securities holdings. In addition, the Committee intends to purchase a further $600 billion of longer-term Treasury securities by the end of the second quarter of 2011, a pace of about $75 billion per month. The Committee will regularly review the pace of its securities purchases and the overall size of the asset-purchase program in light of incoming information and will adjust the program as needed to best foster maximum employment and price stability." $600 billion is $100 billion larger than anticipated and $75 billion per month seems reasonable. This is an appropriate response and stands every chance of being effective, especially since economic activity has been