emckay
Joined 11 years ago
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Member since
Dec 11
DM me on twitter: @eric__mckay
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Comment · 1 year ago
Low participation rate shouldn't matter too much for an RCT right? Just makes the sample smaller so finding statistically significant results is harder.
Different levels of Montessori authenticity make the results even more impressive. They do have some inclusion criteria, like 2/3 of the teachers must be AMI/AMS certified but even so I'd expect a lot of these public school montessori programs to be less "true montessori" than what you'd get at a fully certified AMI/AMS school.
Comment · 3 years ago
I couldn't find any apps that use this method to try it with my 3 y/o, so I started working on my own here: https://eguchi.app .
I'd love feedback if anyone is interested in trying it!
Comment · 6 years ago
Another similar idea is mission hedging.
If there is a company that you believe is causing some harm, you can buy shares of that company and donate any proceeds to a charity that cancels out that harm.
For example, if you are worried about climate change, you can buy shares of an oil company and pledge to donate the proceeds to an organization lobbying for a carbon tax.
If the oil company does well, the carbon tax lobby will need more financing, which you'll be in a position to provide as a shareholder of the oil company.
This idea was developed by economist Brigitte Roth Tran: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2017042pap... .
Hauke Hillebrandt also has a great write up: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iZp7TtZdFyW8eT5dA/...
Comment · 7 years ago
Exactly! Thanks for the kind words.
Comment · 7 years ago
Awesome projects! I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'll shoot you an email tomorrow.
Comment · 7 years ago
Here are the promised citations:
1. $10 trillion divested: https://gofossilfree.org/divestment/commitments/
2. Chevron's shareholder proposal: https://www.asyousow.org/resolutions/2017/12/31/chevron-corp...
3. Chevron makes up about 1% of the S&P 500. 1% * 10% * $10 trillion = $100 million = 78 million shares of CVX at price during 2018 shareholder meeting
4. If 78 million shares voted YES on proposal instead of NO, vote would have passed with 52% in favor (as opposed to 54% in original post)
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Also, for those interested in other arguments against divestment:
1. Economics Nobel Laureate Oliver Hart wrote a paper calling on companies to maximize shareholder "welfare" (including environmental concerns) not just financial value. In this paper he explicitly calls for a fund that uses engagement rather than divestment. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3004794
2. Luigi Zingales (co-author of above paper) calls on UChicago graduates not to divest, but to engage in his 2019 convocation address: https://promarket.org/dear-graduates-heres-what-you-can-do-t...
3. In the New Yorker, philosopher William MacAskill goes into more detail than Bill Gates on why divestment is ineffective: https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/does-divestment-...
Comment · 7 years ago
Resolutions like this one are non-binding. The real power held by shareholders is to fire directors, so if a company's board doesn't comply with the shareholder resolution the shareholders can vote against the directors at the next annual meeting.
In practice, companies "mostly meet" or "completely met" their commitments in response to shareholder engagement 89% of the time according to a 2015 report by Ceres [0].
[0] https://www.ceres.org/sites/default/files/reports/2017-03/Ce...
Comment · 7 years ago
We're creating an S&P 500 index fund that aggressively uses shareholder engagement to get companies to reduce emissions through their supply chains.
Comment · 7 years ago
Divestment also results in less shareholder oversight of emission heavy companies because environmentally conscious investors are selling their shares to investors with less scruples.
This isn't just theoretical.
According to Fossil Free, asset managers with about 10 trillion under management have committed to divesting.
If you assume 10% of that is tracking something like the S&P 500, then these investors have sold about 80 million shares of Chevron.
In 2018, shareholders introduced a proposal asking Chevron to limit its methane emissions. That proposal failed with 46% of the vote.
80 million shares would have been enough to swing the vote to 54% in favor.
I quit my job a couple of months ago to fix this problem. You can learn more at greengovernance.org or by emailing me at (hn username)@greengovernance.org
(typed this from my phone on a plane but I will add citations later when I get to my computer)
Comment · 7 years ago
Really sorry about that :(
I'm using TinyLetter by MailChimp, and I don't have any control over that page. I'll look into other providers in the future.
Comment · 7 years ago
This is a big part of the problem, but there is some hope!
Shareholders of the big oil and gas companies have started to recognize the long-term threat of climate change. There were 87[0] shareholder proposals last year that asked firms to adopt emission reduction targets, disclose lobbying expenses, or take other action that would result in lower emissions.
Most of these failed, largely because the big institutional investors voted against them.
Shameless plug: I'm trying to solve this problem by creating a governance-first index fund [1].
[0] https://voting.greengovernance.org [1] https://greengovernance.org
Comment · 7 years ago
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Comment · 7 years ago
Thanks! Those are all interesting questions -- and also quite hard to answer without a lot of research into each individual company.
One thing my fund will push for is more consistent and granular emissions disclosures across firms so that shareholders have a better idea of where firms are "spending" their emissions and identify inefficiencies.
Comment · 7 years ago
I quit my job last month to work full time on (what I think is) an under-explored area of climate change: how institutional investors block shareholder proposals calling for firms to adopt more climate-friendly policies.
I have just published the first bit of research with data on how 500+ funds from the big 3 fund managers voted on climate change-related proposals in 2018: https://voting.greengovernance.org .
Later this year, I'm planning to launch a "governance-first" ETF that gives investors the same exposure as other funds but is much more aggressive in fighting climate change.
I'd love any feedback! Feel free to email me at <hn-username>@greengovernance.org