The Benefit Corporation: An Economic Analysis with Recommendations to Courts, Boards, & Legislatures

"The benefit corporation legislation can be seen as a system of new formal rules, which at once seeks to complement and increase the effectiveness of the “corporate social responsibility” and “sustainable business” trends, and also disrupt the longstanding, informal constraint of shareholder wealth maximization. This legislation is designed to reduce transaction costs for both consumers and investors who subscribe to the “ethical consumer” and “impact investing” trends, respectively. This Article offers an analysis that describes key challenges of the legislation and prescribes some best-guess answers for how to address such challenges..."

http://law.emory.edu/elj/content/volume-62/issue-4/thrower-symposium-articles/benefit-corporation-courts-boards-legislatures.html