Dear Holden

I would not attribute the origin to the norm of shareholder wealth 
maximisation to Milton Friedman's famous NYT article

That article talks about increasing profit by the business firm, and the 
notion of business profit is not the same as that of shareholder wealth

The latter requires a specific focus on shareholder control over the 
business firm which was prompted by Fama, Jensen and Meckling in the 
1970s. It relates to a peculiar theory of the firm

Other peculiar theories include property rights theory by Grossman and 
Hart, and neo-institutional one by Williamson

 From an accounting perspective, that norm comes back to the proprietary 
view on the firm, which was overcome by the entity theory in the first 
two third of XX century

This article may help for the theory of the firm:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2231340

And this one on accounting theories:

https://doi.org/10.2202/2152-2820.1018


With my best wishes for your research work in 2022

Yuri Biondi


On 13/01/2022 21:57, Holden Fitzgerald wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I am working with Professor Dalia Tsuk Mitchell, corporate law professor 
> at the George Washington University Law School, on a project that 
> involves exploring the origins of the norm of shareholder wealth 
> maximization in the legal domain. At a glance it seems that the norm 
> bleeds into the corporate law from academic and popular economists in 
> the 1970s. Milton Friedman’s famous essay in the NY Times on the social 
> responsibility of corporations being to maximize shareholder value seems 
> like a great starting point, of course, but I wonder if anyone on this 
> list can point me to work that precedes that essay, upon which he may 
> have drawn. Or does this essay mark the foundation of the norm of 
> shareholder wealth maximization?
> 
> Thanks in advance for any leads you can provide.
> 
> Best,
> Holden Fitzgerald
> J.D. Candidate | 2023
> The George Washington University Law School
> 

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Yuri Biondi
Cnrs - IRISSO, University Paris Dauphine PSL

http://yuri.biondi.free.fr/

http://ssrn.com/author=394847