This study examines the effect of outside director tenure length on firms’ market valuation and the voting behavior of outside directors. We make use of the new rule adopted by the Korean government in 2020 that prohibits outside directors from serving more than six (nine) years in a given...

We analyze voting records for management proposals and find that investors today hold directors accountable for a much wider range of issues, such as climate change and board diversity, than in the past. Within environment, climate change is the only subcategory that is significantly associated...

We show that corporate governance practices vary predictably across different types of blockholders. Nonfinancial blockholders are six times as likely to self-identify as active shareholders relative to financial blockholders. Textual analysis of regulatory filings reveals that nonfinancial...

This is the first comprehensive study of the distribution of voting rights to shareholders. Only those owning stock on the record date may vote. Firms, however, reveal that date after the fact 91% of the time. With controversial votes, firms are more likely to do the opposite, and this is...

We find that ownership changes much less over time in private firms than in public firms. The average largest shareholder in private (public) Norwegian firms keeps the same stake in 82% (14%) of two consecutive years. In private firms past ownership dominates ownership determinants proposed in...

We construct and analyze a new data set on U.S. corporate ownership to study how the inclusion of blockholders' and corporate insiders' holdings affects the measurement of common ownership among America's largest publicly traded firms. Including blockholders’ and insiders’ holdings reveals...

Utilizing the patterns in settlement of Scots-Irish in the United States, this study examines the effects of honor culture on corporate control contests. This culture is characterized by the importance of building a personal reputation and maintaining this reputation at all cost. We find that...

We study retail shareholder voting using a detailed and nearly universal sample of anonymizedretail shareholder voting records over the period 2015-2017. Contrary to public perception, wefind that retail shareholders are an influential voting bloc, affecting as many proposal outcomes asthe Big...

Investors are increasingly demonstrating a preference for superior ESG performance among their portfolio firms. Concurrently, the use of ESG-related contracting metrics in executive compensation contracts has increased. We investigate these two related issues in the context of the adoption of...

We examine the effect of voting requirements in M&A transactions on managerial disclosure, information asymmetries, and voting outcomes. We find that voting requirements lead firms to provide more disclosure and in a timelier manner, including disclosure of the merger agreement, information on...