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Concept
Impact investing
Summary
Impact investing refers to investments "made into companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate a measurable, beneficial social or environmental impact alongside a financial return". At its core, impact investing is about an alignment of an investor's beliefs and values with the allocation of capital to address social and/or environmental issues.
Impact investors actively seek to place capital in businesses, nonprofits, and funds in industries such as renewable energy, housing, healthcare, education, microfinance, and sustainable agriculture. Institutional investors, notably North American and European development finance institutions, pension funds and endowments have played a leading role in the development of impact investing. Under Pope Francis, the Catholic Church has seen an increased interest in impact investing.
Impact investing occurs across asset classes; for example, private equity/venture capital, debt, and fixed income. Impact investments can be made in either emerging or developed markets, and depending on the goals of the investors, can "target a range of returns from below-market to above-market rates".
Historically, regulation—and to a lesser extent, philanthropy—was an attempt to minimize the negative social consequences (unintended consequences, externalities) of business activities. However, a history of individual investors using socially responsible investing to express their values exists, and such investing behavior is usually defined by the avoidance of investments in specific companies or activities with negative effects.
Simultaneously, approaches such as pollution prevention, corporate social responsibility, and triple bottom line began as measurements of non-financial effects, both inside and outside of corporations. In 2000, Baruch Lev of the NYU's Stern School of Business collated thinking about intangible assets in a book of the same name, which furthered thinking about the non-financial effects of corporate production.
Official source
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