SK's Social Progress Credit has paid out under 15 cents per dollar of the social value it verified

SEWF's own numbers fix the size of the price. The credit has distributed $52 million against more than $360 million of verified social value, according to SEWF ^[9], and because $360 million is a floor, that works out to 14.4 cents on the dollar at most ^[10]. Chey first proposed the model at Davos in 2013 and SK introduced it in Korea in 2015 ^[4]. Spread across more than 400 enterprises, the average recipient has received under $130,000 in total ^[11].

We think the record so far shows how enterprises respond to a payment. Chey's claim concerns investors: measuring impact will not draw enough capital, he said on Monday ^[1]. "Relying on altruism alone cannot generate the scale needed to address growing social problems," he said at the opening session in Seoul ^[2]. The sources do not say who funds the $52 million, how the $360 million was verified, or whether any outside investor has put money into the scheme. If SK and its affiliates fund every dollar, the credit is a corporate programme with a price list, and 400 recipients are evidence about the recipients only. The counter-case is that a reference price has to exist before anyone will bid against it (or rather, before anyone will bid at all), and a formula is the quickest way to create one.

Chey has also proposed a market. Last year, at the Schwab Foundation general assembly, he proposed a way to trade social value within market systems, according to the Seoul Economic Daily ^[7]. A formula sets the SPC's price. A trade would let buyers set it, and the first buyer other than SK would be the clearest evidence for Chey's case.

The WEF and Schwab Foundation report's "impact paradox" explains why a payer is needed: tackling a social problem produces benefits shared broadly while the costs fall on individual companies or investors ^[13]. Chey described the SPC as "a kind of new method that reduces costs for the state and society" ^[15]. In our view that makes the state the other natural payer. We would drop the reading above if SEWF or SK disclosed that a meaningful share of the $52 million came from outside SK, or if a buyer other than SK paid for social value in any traded transaction.