The surge in US corporate buybacks to all-time highs in 2018 has generated public debate about the effects of buybacks on workers, companies, and the economy. We speak with William Lazonick, prof. at the University of Massachusetts, about the concerns driving this debate, at the core of which is the notion that buybacks come at the expense of investment. But GS portfolio strategists see little evidence of this. Aswath Damodaran, prof. at the NYU Stern School of Business, argues that’s because buybacks redirect—rather than reduce—investment, and trapping cash in firms that don’t have a good use for it instead would harm their competitiveness. More broadly, Steven Davis, prof. at The Chicago Booth School of Business, explains that such an inefficient allocation of resources would shrink the size of the economic “pie” and likely reinforce the unequal distribution of it. As for market impacts, we conclude that banning buybacks would likely lead to lower and more volatile US equity markets.

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