Institutional investors are less likely to support shareholder proposals involving environmental and social issues for firms headquartered in Republican-led states. The lower support concentrates in recent years, when politicians became more vocal about firms' social responsibility activities,...

This paper empirically examines the theoretically ambivalent relationship between socially responsible investing (SRI) and stock performance. It extends the existing literature by considering both the US and the entire European stock markets as well as by using consistent world-wide corporate...

We provide the first, large sample evidence on firms’ voluntary, third-party verification of environmental and social metrics in ESG reports (“ESG assurance”) in the United States. Focusing on S&P 500 firms from 2010-2020, we document a striking increase in ESG assurance. Unlike financial...

This paper compares the extent of common ownership in the US and the EU stock markets, with a particular focus on differences in the applicable ownership transparency requirements. Most empirical research on common ownership to date has focused on US issuers, largely relying on ownership data...

Purpose As the influence of institutional investors over managerial decision-making grows, so does the importance of understanding the effect of institutional investor ownership (IO) on firm outcomes. The authors take a comprehensive approach to studying the effect of IO on earnings management...

We construct a novel data set to show that, between 2003-2020, up to one-fifth of America's largest firms had a non-financial blockholder or insider as their largest shareholder. Blockholders and insiders tend to be less diversified than institutional investors. Measures of "universal" and...

Despite the incentives of incumbent domestic listed corporations (DLCs) in the electricity generation industry, private equity, institutional investors, and foreign corporations have played an outsized role in financing the energy transition. These new entrants are twice as likely to create...

This paper compares the extent of common ownership in the US and the EU stock markets, with a particular focus on differences in the ap-plicable ownership transparency requirements. Most empirical research on common ownership to date has focused on US issuers, largely relying on ownership data...