We characterize the conditions under which a socially responsible (SR) fund induces firms to reduce externalities, even when profit-seeking capital is in perfectly elastic supply. Such impact requires that the SR fund's mandate permits the fund to trade off financial performance against reductions in social costs -- relative to the counterfactual in which the fund does not invest in a given firm. Based on such an impact mandate, we derive the social profitability index (SPI), an investment criterion that characterizes the optimal ranking of impact investments when SR capital is scarce.
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