We show that close votes on shareholder proposals are disproportionately more likely to be won by management than by shareholder activists. Using a sample of shareholder proposals from 2003 to 2016, we uncover a large and discontinuous drop in the density of voting results at the 50% threshold....

Shareholder votes may create value because they force boards to implement proposals' content or because they signal shareholders' discontent. In order to distinguish these hypotheses, we collect data on the implementation of shareholder proposals. We show that the decision to implement proposals...

Strong corporate governance may bear some costs to shareholders when it leads to the departure of value-enhancing CEOs out of disagreement with the board. We test this hypothesis using the passing of shareholder proposals related to anti-takeover provisions in closely contested votes as a...

In the pre-Sarbanes-Oxley era corporate insiders were required to report trades in shares of their firm until the 10th of the month following the trade. This gave them considerable flexibility to time their trades and reports strategically, e.g., by executing a sequence of trades and reporting...