We show that in countries with more societal trust shareholders cast fewer votes at shareholder meetings and are more supportive of management proposals. This result is confirmed by instrumental variable regressions. It also holds at the U.S.-county level and for voting by U.S. institutional...

This paper examines the conditions under which CEOs are able to affect the timing and the price of the stock options they are granted at the time of their firm's IPO. Contrary to Lowry and Murphy (2007) who do not find a relationship between IPO grants and IPO underpricing, this paper finds such...

A change in the index selection rules of Deutsche Börse provides a unique opportunity to investigate the drivers behind the decision to a bolish dual-class shares. As of June 2002, selection is based on the market capitalization of the free-float of the more liquid share class rather than the...

The first striking feature is that ownership of the average UK company is diffuse: a coalition of at least eight shareholders is required to reach an absolute majority of voting rights. Even though the average firm has a dispersed ownership, the reader should bear in mind that there are about...

This paper studies the impact of the concentration of control, the type of controlling shareholder and the dividend tax preference of the controlling shareholder on dividend policy for a panel of 220 German firms over 1984-2005. While the concentration of control does not have an effect on the...