We develop a dynamic model of socially responsible investment where large households trade firm equity and vote on production decisions involving the depletion of a nonrenewable resource. Although accumulating wealth and exercising voice are intratemporal substitutes, they are dynamic complements because influence is tied to wealth. Socially responsible households delay implementing resource-preserving policies that reduce firm productivity to amass wealth for future influence, while financially-motivated households may accumulate wealth to block conservation efforts. The constrained efficient technological choice balances higher productivity with society’s willingness to pay for conservation, and can be implemented through a voting protocol that assigns voice based on how depletion impacts welfare rather than shareholdings.

This paper studies how the timing of NGO activism shapes its effectiveness in influencing corporate behavior. Using data on 2,500 campaigns targeting U.S. firms, we show that campaigns timed at annual general meetings (AGMs) generate large visibility gains but little contemporaneous influence, while campaigns launched before the AGM significantly increase shareholder proposal success and improve firms’ environmental and social performance. We develop a dynamic model in which NGOs trade off awareness building and credibility formation, generating a lifecycle in activism from visibility-seeking to influence-oriented engagement. Therefore, NGOs’ objectives evolve endogenously to coordinate shareholder pressure and shape corporate behavior.

We build a model in which local externalities generate heterogeneous preferences among investors and shape stockholdings, corporate voting, and welfare. We study this mechanism in the context of pollution. Risk-averse investors suffer from pollution produced by local firms, which choose between more productive brown and less productive green technologies through ownership-weighted voting. Diversification attracts brown-voting external investors, distorting local investors’ portfolios and votes, generating inefficient technology choice and risk sharing. A passive fund that maximizes assets under management can alleviate this coordination failure and, in most cases, implement the first best, although its concern for portfolio value can induce excessive brown voting. Pass-through voting weakens the fund’s coordinating role and can reduce welfare. Our findings show how green preferences can arise endogenously from investors’ economic interests.