Don’t Let the Short-Termism Bogeyman Scare You

This issue of Harvard Business Review includes, as many prior issues did, an article decrying the perils of short-termism and supporting measures for insulating corporate leaders from the outside pressures that allegedly make them myopic. But such arguments are long on alarming rhetoric and short on empirical evidence or economic logic. Furthermore, their supporters overlook substantial benefits that outside-investor oversight produces and that such measures would sacrifice.