TY  - JOUR
AU  - Nilsson, Andreas
AU  - Robinson, David T
TI  - What is the Business of Business?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 23505
PY  - 2017
Y2  - June 2017
DO  - 10.3386/w23505
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w23505
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w23505.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Andreas Nilsson
Sonanz GmbH
Franz-Joseph-Straße 12
80801 Munich
Germany
E-Mail: nilsson@sonanz.com

David T. Robinson
Fuqua School of Business
Duke University
100 Fuqua Drive
Durham, NC 27708
Tel: 919/660-8023
Fax: 919/684-2818
E-Mail: davidr@duke.edu
M1  - published as Andreas Nilsson, David T. Robinson. "What Is the Business of Business?," in Josh Lerner and Scott Stern, editors, "Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 18" University of Chicago Press (2018)

M3  - presented at "Innovation Policy and the Economy", April 18, 2017
AB  - This paper develops a simple framework for understanding the emergence of new organizational forms, such as socially responsible firms and social entrepreneurs, that embody the private sector's efforts to resolve problems that typically have been within the purview of government and traditional public charities. We consider organizations that can generate both financial and social returns. Differences in the technologies between the for-profit sector and the social sector give rise to comparative advantages and play a key part in the analysis. This allows us to analyze the conditions under which hybrid organizations emerge in place of traditional charities and profit-maximizers.
ER  -