We examine the relation between disclosure tone and shareholder litigation to determine whether managers’ use of optimistic language increases litigation risk. Using both general-purpose and context-specific text dictionaries to quantify tone, we find that plaintiffs target more optimistic...

We investigate how mutual funds with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) objectives vote on shareholder proposals related to executive compensation. Using a sample of 94,695 votes by 2,354 mutual funds from 2012 to 2021, we find that ESG funds are 9.4% more likely than non-ESG funds to...

Three exercises related to stockholders' equity are presented. Students are asked to record transactions, and then consider their effect on the financial statements. The exercises include the issuance of common and preferred stock, payment of dividends, repurchase and reissue of stock, stock...

We document evidence that mutual funds designated as “Sustainable Investment Overall” by Morningstar (which we classify as ESG mutual funds) are no more likely than other mutual funds to support shareholder proposals. We find, however, that ESG mutual funds are more likely than non-ESG...