Pension funds and sovereign-wealth funds own a large and increasing fraction of the shares in publicly traded companies in the OECD area. These funds typically have a very long time horizon on their investments, as well as highly diversified portfolios. These features imply that the interests of...

Typically, shareholders are not sure whether boards act in their interest, or have been captured by management. They are also less well informed than boards about firm investment opportunities and operating conditions. We develop a model, consistent with these observations, in which...

Horizontal shareholdings exist when a common set of investors own significant shares in corporations that are horizontal competitors in a product market. Economic models show that substantial horizontal shareholdings are likely to anticompetitively raise prices when the owned businesses compete...

We provide an in-depth comparison of US and UK shareholder proposal rules and relate the differences in rules to differences in proposing activities, using comprehensive shareholder proposal data from both countries for 2000-2006. UK proposal rules are more onerous on proposal sponsors, but UK...

Although empirical studies show that common shareholding affects corporate conduct and that common horizontal shareholding lessens competition, critics have argued that the law should not take any action until we have clearer proof on the causal mechanisms. I show that we actually have ample...

Mutual fund advisers either expense the cost of research and other services or pay for them with soft dollars. This study is the first to use actual soft dollar and total brokerage commission figures for a large number of funds and to examine how soft dollars are linked to mutual fund...

This study examines the impact of diversifying acquisitions on acquiring Turkish firms. Using a sample of 98 acquisitions during 2000-2011, the study finds that acquiring firms experience statistically significant wealth gains surrounding the announcement date. The cross-sectional regression...

Does additional shareholder liability reduce bank failure? We compare the performance of around 4,400 state-regulated banks of similar size in neighboring U.S. states with different liability regimes during the Great Depression. We find that additional shareholder liability reduced bank failure...

Horizontal shareholding exists when significant shareholders have stock in horizontal competitors. (It is often imprecisely called "common shareholding," but that term can also apply when shareholders own stock in two noncompeting corporations. It differs from "cross-shareholding," which...