Rooftops, people

We find that consumer surplus is the primary component of social impact (dwarfing profits, worker surplus, and externalities), suggesting that consumer impacts deserve more attention from impact investors. Existing ESG and social impact ratings are essentially unrelated to our economically grounded measures.

That is from a new NBER working paper by Hunt Allcott, Giovanni Montanari, Bora Ozaltun, and Brandon Tan.