Shareholder activism on sustainability issues has become increasingly prevalent over the years, with the number of proposals filed doubling from 1999 to 2013. We use recent innovations in accounting standard setting to classify 2,665 shareholder proposals that address environmental and social...

Corporate financial economic programs are almost universally featured in economics and management degrees and, therefore, are an essential component of the culture-building process for current and future economists and managers. Nevertheless, these programs are not restricted to financial...

Currently, there is much debate about the role that non-investor stakeholder interests play in the governance of public companies. Critics argue that greater attention should be paid to the interest of stakeholders and that by investing in initiatives and programs to promote their interests,...

In an article forthcoming in the Journal of Corporate Law, Systematic Stewardship with Tradeoffs, Profs. Kahan and Rock take issue with the portfolio approach that I offered in Systematic Stewardship (47 J. Corp. L. 627 (2022)) on the grounds that corporate law requires a “single firm focus”...

The notion that good corporate governance means maximizing shareholder value derives from the neoclassical theory of the market economy. I explain why this perspective is highly problematic for understanding the operation and performance of the business corporation and hence the institutions...

This paper investigates the impact of financialization and changes in corporate governance on income inequality for a sample of 13 OECD countries between 1980 and 2010. Though financialization and changes in corporate governance have been widespread, there has been little empirical analysis of...

We study the relationship between opportunities for managerial diversion, corporate tax system parameters and the return on shareholder funds. Theoretically, in a simple game between corporate insiders and outsiders, higher costs of diversion increase the return. European firm-level data lend...

Economic models routinely assume firms maximize shareholder wealth; however common law legal systems only require that officers and directors pursue the interests of the corporation, leaving this ill-defined. Economic arguments for shareholder wealth maximization derived from shareholders'...

Economic models routinely assume firms maximize shareholder wealth; however common law legal systems only require that officers and directors pursue the interests of the corporation, leaving this ill-defined. Economic arguments for shareholder wealth maximization derived from shareholders'...

The theories underpinning corporate use of derivatives are well developed. Furthermore, there exist compelling economic reasons why hedging should lead to enhanced shareholder value, but empirical evidence in support of a substantial value increase from hedging is, at best, mixed. In this paper,...