Larry Beeferman

Abstract by Sir Rod Eddington AO, Chairman Infrastructure AustraliaInfrastructure is critical to our economy, our community and our pursuit of a sustainable environment. But what do we mean by the term “infrastructure” and do different understandings of that term confuse our attempts to decide on our future investment and development priorities?In this important paper “Infrastructure – Defining Matters”, Drs Beeferman and Wain explore how we should consider and define “infrastructure”. They focus on enterprise and people and argue that context is critical. It is an important contribution to our thinking on this crucial topic.They use both formal analysis and practical application to inform this different approach. A number of US Pension Funds contributed to the analysis via a comprehensive survey.Beeferman and Wain challenge our understanding and definition of “infrastructure”. They argue that understanding infrastructure’s important role in our society is key to informed analysis. Th at this provides a context for economic and community analysis in both developed and developing countries.This paper is a very useful contribution to an issue that is increasingly important to economies and communities around the world.

uses to implement its policy. The author argues that there does not seem to be a trade-off between returns and socially responsible investment goals, and that social investment strategies should use a variety of tools to promote social goals in order to encourage firms to act according to a set of standards. She highlights the role of trade unions as being the guardians of international labour standards, sources of information and finally as actors that can demand that asset managers adhere to socially responsible investment strategies. In conclusion, this special issue of Transfer reflects the ambiguity and difficulty for trade unions in engaging as financial market actors via pension funds. This difficulty and ambiguity however varies across countries, with the UK, US and the Netherlands embracing the concept of capital stewardship and building up experience and capacity to act. Trade unions and their capacity to act are, however, not the only factors able to influence pension fund investment strategies. Also key is the regulatory framework within which pension funds operate. There are several elements determining how capital stewardship can be carried out and how it can conflict with trade union aims of promoting core labour standards and sustainable growth. The articles identify several avenues with regard to institutional settings, regulatory frameworks, available instruments and importance of the current financial market reforms, in terms of the role of trade unions. Each of the authors has contributed to advance our understanding of the link between pension funds’ investment strategies and trade union action. These articles can therefore contribute to stimulate the thinking and debate about this issue. The issue was inspired by the debates that took place during the conference on capital stewardship that was held in Brussels on 10 December 2009 and co-organized by the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC), the Pension and Capital Stewardship project of the Labour and Worklife program, Harvard Law School and the ETUI.

opinions and perspectives herein are the sole responsibility of the authors. The copyright for this report is held by the President and Fellow of Harvard College. The material in this report may be reproduced and distributed without advance permission, but only if attributed. If reproduced substantially or entirely, it should include all copyright and trademark notices. © Copyright 2015, President and Fellows of Harvard College The Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute (IRRCi) is a nonprofit research organization that funds academic and practitioner research that enables investors, policymakers, and other stakeholders to make data-driven decisions. IRRCi research covers a wide range of topics of interest to investors, is objective, unbiased, and disseminated widely. The Labor and Worklife Program (LWP) is Harvard University’s forum for research and teaching on the world of work and its implications for society. Located at the Harvard Law School, the LWP brings together s...

We find majorities or significant minorities of the largest global corporations collect a variety of human capital (HC) metrics of increasing interest to institutional investors. These averages mask a sharp dichotomy between metrics disclosed publicly and those reported by respondents to an annual survey of nearly 2,000 of the largest firms traded on global exchanges. For example, about half of these companies report the average hours of training they provided to employees annually. But the figure was dramatically higher for respondents, at 84 percent, versus just 18 percent of firms assessed using public reporting. Similarly, while 52 percent of firms publicly report employee fatalities, 96 percent of survey respondents disclosed the metrics, but only 17 percent of publicly assessed companies. Comparable differentials were found across other measures. The findings suggest that investors could gain access to HC data that is material to financial performance if they request public di...

This book studies how the legal system handles the ever-changing lines between public and private power. It covers the paradox that occurs when the Constitution's expansion of one individual's spheres of protection ultimately leads to the contraction of another person's sphere of freedom. In order to exhibit the legal system's reaction to such a paradox, the study describes diverse approaches in course law, doctrine, and theory. It covers premises common to these approaches and their inability to resolve the problem. It confronts and exposes the different views of the citizen-state relationship implicit in those approaches. Finally, the study suggests that continuing to question and investigate perspectives of the citizen-state relationship will offer insight as to how the conduct of private individuals and public officials might properly be governed. Images of the Citizen and the State will appeal to law teachers and scholars as well as those in practice. It is high...

sset-based policies can address poverty and inequality effectively and command broad support. Asset-based policies measure well-being not only by income, but also in terms of building human capital and financial assets. They address the common needs and aspirations of Americans by rewarding work, promoting initiative and self-reliance, and embodying widely shared beliefs about fairness and opportunity.

What are asset-development policies? What programs are underway to explore such policies? Larry Beeferman of the Asset Development Institute describes the movement and his views on why asset-development policies are vital to economic equality.

This essay is most immediately about reliance on and the relationship among three discourses framed with reference to that which is deemed or thought to be “real”. One involves arguments within the context of pension-fund decision-making as to the potential importance of investment in “real assets,” among them, infrastructure as a real asset. Another pertains to debates about the role of “finance” in an economy, especially at the extreme insofar as it entails what some have referred to as “financialization” specifically as it is cast in terms of a problematic relationship between the sphere of finance and that of the “real economy.” A third involves discussion about investment decision-making undertaken with a conscious reference to settling upon them in light of an understanding of what Islam requires, permits, or bars – an exercise which falls under the broader rubric of “Islamic finance” – more particularly, the significance of “real assets” to that understanding. For the most part, the paper is focused on the third topic, the meaning and import of making investments offered within the context of Islamic finance. That meaning and import necessarily varies with the vantage point of those persons or organizations contemplating investments of that sort. They depend upon whether the person considering investment in some way embraces Islam; if so, how he or she accepts it, that is, how it shapes his view of the world and his or her place in it, and what it expects, encourages, or requires of him or her in diverse ways (including making of investments); if not, in what respects, how thinking (and acting) in such terms might, nonetheless be relevant, useful, and perhaps even potentially important. Our discussion is grounded in the latter vantage point though it necessarily entails an alertness to and appreciation of the other.

ABSTRACT This article describes US unions’ efforts at capital stewardship, that is, the investment and management of the assets accumulated in pension and other retirement plans (frequently termed ‘workers’ or ‘labour’s capital’) — on behalf of plan participants and in the interest of workers more generally. It focuses particularly on the opportunities for direct worker voice in the governance and management of those assets through workers serving as trustees of the plans. The article explores the challenges these trustees face in navigating that role in addition to their possibly conflicting role as a union member or official. It details unions’ visions for capital stewardship and their efforts to integrate trustees’ activities within the broader range of union activities. Finally, it describes ways in which unions have collaborated in support of their trustees and to develop a cross-union capital stewardship agenda.

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ABSTRACT Most of the investment community currently has a hazy and haphazard understanding of the materiality of human capital factors. A handful of firms have integrated a few aspects such as health and safety into their investment models, as Goldman Sachs has done with its GS Sustain product. More recently there has been a growing acceptance of studies finding outperformance by firms that embrace workforce diversity, especially at the board level. Yet an extensive body of research has been done on a range of such factors that has gone largely unnoticed by the investment community, most likely because it has been undertaken for the most part by academics at schools of management and practitioners at management consulting firms. We have begun a two-pronged project designed to help investors assess human capital materiality. The first part involves a meta-study to assess significant materiality findings already extant in the field. The second will use these results to identify key performance indicators that investors can use in portfolio decision-making.

Pension funds can be thought of as deferred workers wages. In many cases occupational pension funds have been established at the bargaining table through union representation. While all pension funds are established for the benefit of the pension plan beneficiaries, these deferred workers wages also have a significant impact on the communities in which they are invested. Labor friendly investments seek to direct the impacts of investment in a manner that creates strong and healthy communities and supports union or fair wage employment practices. Labor friendly pension funds in the US are generally either Taft-Hartley pension plans (jointly trusteed or union trusteed multi-employer plans) or public sector pension funds with a significant presence of union trustees. These funds often have a range of labor friendly policies and programs aimed at building strong and healthy communities. Such programs include responsible contractors' policies, responsible investors' policies, and specific allocations for targeted (or economically targeted) investments in their investment portfolio. These targeted investments often require union built construction (in the case of real estate or fixed income mortgage backed securities) or are aimed at job creation and retention (in the case of private equity investments). This paper explores the evolution of labor friendly US investments by pension funds in the period since the downturn of the financial markets in 2001. It argues that both pension funds and investment vehicles that bring intentional targeting to their investments are becoming increasingly sophisticated financial players. Labor friendly investments that focus on risk adjusted rates of return as the driver for investment are increasingly able to point to strong track records that encourage a wide range of pension fund investors to engage with these vehicles and practices.

For much of the relevant literature, the “Anglo-liberal” model is the least satisfactory approach to the provision of retirement pensions. This article addresses a particular aspect of the Anglo-liberal model, the investment of retirement savings in equities and other interest-bearing assets, to augment retirement benefits. The management of such investment pays insufficient attention to the externalities that may arise from corporate decision-making. Nevertheless, several US pension funds have embraced labour-friendly investment practices, which are vital to the well-being of employees, as well as the maintenance of sustainable and vibrant communities. In this respect, the Anglo-liberal model is not necessarily at variance with the demands of social justice and inclusion.

ABSTRACT A content analysis of the mainstream media's coverage of Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the time of her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court reveals a highly sympathetic and almost totally uncritical portrayal. Further analysis of the Ginsburg coverage in liberal, conservative, and specialty publications and an analysis of Ginsburg's record as an appellate court judge brings to light a very different Ginsburg whose record is good on feminist concerns yet middling to poor on other progressive issues. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky's propaganda model of the media and the politics of the Clinton administration are employed to interpret the radical disjuncture created by the mainstream media's disingenuous treatment of Ginsburg's legal career.

Companies have been pressed to make public disclosures with respect to their workplace-related policies and practices. Despite the many reasons why worker voice is important not only to workers as such but also the companies at which they are employed, major privately advanced prescriptions for disclosure fail to meaningfully press for disclosure with respect to matters of worker voice. Those reasons, the limitations of those prescriptions, and recommendations for needed change are canvassed.