Motivated by the public debate regarding corporate responsibility, we construct a memory-based model of decision-making to illustrate how corporate and political communication can impact policy preferences. We test the predictions of our model in a new large-scale survey of U.S. citizens on...

In 2017, "The Big Three" institutional investors launched campaigns to increase gender diversity on corporate boards. We estimate that their campaigns led American corporations to add at least 2.5 times as many female directors in 2019 as they had in 2016. Firms increased diversity by...

Institutional investors are less likely to support shareholder proposals involving environmental and social issues for firms headquartered in Republican-led states. The lower support concentrates in recent years, when politicians became more vocal about firms' social responsibility activities,...

We study the interplay between a "one person-one vote" political system and a "one share-one vote" corporate governance regime. The political system sets Pigouvian subsidies, while corporate governance determines firm-specific public good investments. Our analysis highlights a two-way feedback...

Shareholder power in the US grew over recent decades due to a steep rise in concentrated institutional ownership. Using establishment-level data from the US Census Bureau's Longitudinal Business Database for 1982-2015, this paper examines the impact of increases in concentrated institutional...

Passively managed funds have grown to become some of the largest shareholders in publicly traded companies, but there is considerable debate about the effects of this growth on corporate governance. The goal of this paper is to review the literature on the governance implications of passive fund...

This survey provides an overview of theoretical and empirical research on information flows in corporations. It highlights key frictions preventing effective information flows and discusses how organizational structure and corporate governance can alleviate these frictions, focusing on three...

Although corporate finance theory suggests how adverse shocks influence shareholder preferences toward corporate risk-taking and executive compensation, few researchers explore this relationship empirically. We construct a firm-year measure of unexpected shocks to environmental regulatory...

Microgiving, a new form of digital fundraising, operates by soliciting minuscule, recurring donations from large numbers of potential donors. We evaluate a charity subscription program operated by Alibaba, China's largest retail platform, which allows sellers to pledge a tiny portion of a...

Gendered-grammar languages like Spanish are spoken by 39% of the world's population. In a field experiment in partnership with a Spanish-speaking online platform for technology positions, ads randomly selected to use gender-neutral language receive a larger share of female applicants for...