How to overcome barriers to the long-term investments that are essential for solving the world’s biggest problems

There has never been a greater need for long-term investments to tackle the world’s most difficult problems, such as climate change, human health, and decaying infrastructure. And it is increasingly unlikely that the public sector will be willing or able to fill this gap. If these critical needs are to be met, the major pools of long-term, patient capital—including pensions, sovereign wealth funds, university endowments, and wealthy individuals and families—will have to play a large role. In this accessible and authoritative account of long-term capital investment, two leading experts on the subject, Victoria Ivashina and Josh Lerner, highlight the significant hurdles facing long-term investors and propose concrete ways to overcome these difficulties.

Victoria Ivashina is the Lovett-Learned Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School. Josh Lerner is the Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking at Harvard Business School and the author of, among other books, Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed—and What to Do about It (Princeton).