Hongying Cai, Qing Zhang, Jing Lin, Dongjie Tao and Cheng Li went to attend the speech given by Oliver Hart, the winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize in economics and professor of Harvard University, in Fudan University on the morning of March,14, 2018. This lecture is jointly held by China Center for Economic Studies Fudan University and Fudan University Greencourt Institute.

Topic of Professor Hart’s speech is “Companies Should Maximize Shareholder Welfare Not Market Value”. Professor Hart started with Friedman's view in The New York Times that companies should make decisions according to wishes of shareholders, which is to make as much money as possible without violating the law and social morality. However, professor Hart thinks that shareholders are not only concerned about the profitability of companies, but also about the impact of corporate decisions on society. Later, professor Hart used a concise and clear model to proof his argument.

Professor Hart believes there is a clear difference between shareholders’ benefits and market value of the company. As a social person, shareholder does not only concern about profits of the company, but also about the impact of corporate behaviors on the society, such as pollution, etc. The negative externality caused by these corporate behaviors to the society do not need to be internalized by relying on the government or third-party institutions, but should be carried out by changing the way of corporate governance. That is to say, the goal of corporate governance should be turned into welfare of shareholders rather than market value of the company. In this case, shareholders will take these influences into consideration of the overall welfare when making decisions due to attention paid to the impact of corporate behaviors to achieve internalization of externality of corporate behaviors.

During the Q&A session, teachers and students actively asked questions, and discussed on theoretical hypothesis, decision-making connotation and how to accurately define shareholder welfare and other aspects with professor Hart. The atmosphere was very warm.

Starting from Friedman's view,Professor Hart explained the important issues in the process of corporate governance in a simple way, making a wonderful academic feast for everyone. Among which, the understanding of shareholder welfare caused the heated discussion on the spot. The audience expressed their sincere admiration for Professor Hart's clear speech ideas and the way of explaining by combining theories with model.

In addition to listening to the forefront academic ideas of the world's leading scholars, during this trip to Fudan, group of dean Cai also considered aspects like talent introduction and cultivation of talents and so on, carried out talent introduction of Finance and Tax doctoral graduates from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics in a short period of a day and a half trip and visited our school Tax course master’s course student Liu Yihui in Fudan University, who graduated from our university in 2016 with excellent grades of the first written test score.