We address whether mutual funds act effectively through the proxy voting process by supporting wealth increasing items. We examine 212,620 voting decisions made by 1,794 mutual funds from 94 fund families for 1,047 shareholder proposals voted on between July 2003 and June 2005. We find that...

We examine shareholder voting on management-sponsored compensation proposals from 1992 through 2003 to determine how voting has evolved as a result of changes in the corporate governance environment. We investigate three questions: have regulatory changes and changes in investor sentiment...

In this paper, we provide evidence concerning the extent to which managers are to blame when their firms become bankrupt. We study a sample of firms that end up in severe financial distress to determine the actions taken by firms' managers as their financial positions worsen. We compare the...

Analysis of 187 proxy contests for board seats from the 1979-89 period indicates that the proxy mechanism made a significant contribution to corporate governance in the 1980s by overcoming obstacles to the market for corporate control, by inducing the removal of incumbent management, and by...

We argue that management sells assets when doing so provides the cheapest funds to pursue its objectives rather than for operating efficiency reasons alone. This hypothesis suggests that (1) firms selling assets have high leverage and/or poor performance, and (2) the stock market discounts asset...

Using an original dataset of fully monetized LBOs initiated from 1990-2006, we examine the emergence of an entrepreneurial transaction strategy focused on revenue growth and its incidence relative to more "classic" strategies focused on operating efficiencies. We additionally show how the...

Promotion decisions for professors are critical for any university and this is especially true when promotion also involves the granting of tenure. In this paper, we report the number of publications for Finance professors promoted to Associate or Full Professor at schools similar to the...