A wave of legislative efforts in the first half of this decade, at both the federal and state levels, has steered corporations to engage in corporate social responsibility. At the national level, Congress is increasingly calling upon the Securities and Exchange Commission to promulgate specialized disclosure rules. The most notable example is Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act, requiring publicly traded corporations to disclose their use of broadly defined “conflict minerals” in any products the corporations manufacture. At the local level, well over half the state legislatures have adopted benefit corporation statutes meant to encourage corporate directors to promote the public good. These two well-meaning phenomena appear congruent and their goals seem promising: superficially, the SEC’s specialized disclosure rules can be characterized as federal benefit corporation rules. Closer examination, however, reveals that the reasoning bolstering the state benefit corporation statutes, aimed more at symbolism than substance, undermines the likely effectiveness of the federal specialized disclosure rules. Comparison of the two models indicates that the federal rules yield substantial costs but speech of little value, little change in corporate behavior, and, consequently, little advancement of the social cause the rules target. Econometric analysis of first-year filings under the SEC conflict minerals regulations supports this apprehension, suggesting that the benefits of the federal benefit corporation rules are more illusory than actual. By over-promising and under-delivering, these federal corporate social responsibility rules are, in fact, irresponsible.

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不负责任的企业责任规则

本十年前半年，联邦和州一级的立法工作浪潮已引导企业承担企业社会责任。在国家层面，国会越来越多地呼吁证券交易委员会颁布专门的披露规则。最显着的例子是《多德-弗兰克法案》第 1502 条，要求上市公司披露其在公司制造的任何产品中使用广义定义的“冲突矿物”。在地方一级，超过一半的州立法机构通过了旨在鼓励公司董事促进公共利益的福利公司法规。这两个善意的现象似乎是一致的，它们的目标似乎很有希望：从表面上看，SEC 的专门披露规则可以归为联邦福利公司规则。然而，更仔细的研究表明，支持州福利公司法规的推理更多地旨在象征而非实质，破坏了联邦专门披露规则的可能有效性。两种模型的比较表明，联邦规则产生了大量成本，但言论价值不大，企业行为几乎没有变化，因此，规则所针对的社会事业几乎没有进步。根据 SEC 冲突矿产法规对第一年备案的计量经济学分析支持这种担忧，表明联邦福利公司规则的好处比实际更虚幻。通过过度承诺和交付不足，