The rise of a small group of investment (asset) managers with an enormous potential to influence corporate decision-making has reinforced attention to shareholder stewardship as one of the pillars of corporate governance. But weak incentives to invest in shareholder oversight and limited...

We propose a novel way of measuring the equity portfolio-level environmental and social characteristics of a 13F institution (the “sustainability footprint”) and examine the relation between sustainability footprints and risk-adjusted investment performance. The analysis shows that 13F...

We explore a novel survey on responsible investing by institutional investors around the world and match it to archival data on their equity portfolio holdings. We document that institutions that publicly commit to responsible investing exhibit better environmental, social, and governance (ESG)...

Pension fund capitalism is a new, albeit evolving, stage of Anglo-American capital market development. It is marked by the ability of pension funds to aggregate the widely disbursed ownership of beneficiaries and therefore act as single entities with a unified voice. Pension funds within their...

There is an increasing demand for socially responsible investment (SRI), and SRI screens are an important source of information for investors. Yet, little is known about the relationship between investors' attitudes, use of SRI screens, and actual SRI behavior. To examine this relationship, we...

Shareholder say-on-pay votes allow institutional investors to influence the incentives of managers and, consequently, corporate behaviour. Surprisingly, the preferences of investors on executive compensation have been largely overlooked in the ongoing debates on sustainable corporate behaviour....