We provide a comprehensive overview of the role of institutional investors in corporate governance with three main components. First, we provide a detailed characterization of key aspects of the legal and regulatory setting within which institutional investors govern portfolio firms. Second, we...

We investigate whether business ties with portfolio firms influence mutual funds' proxy voting using a comprehensive data set spanning 2003 to 2011. In contrast to prior literature, we find that business ties significantly influence pro-management voting at the level of individual pairs of fund...

We develop a dual-layered agency model to study blockholder monitoring by activist funds that compete for investor flow. Competition for flow affects the manner in which activist funds govern as blockholders. In particular, funds inflate short-term performance by increasing payouts financed by...

In firms with multiple blockholders governance via exit is affected by how blockholders react to each others' exit. Institutional investors, who hold the majority of equity blocks, are heterogeneous in their incentives. How do these incentives affect the manner in which institutional...

Effective monitoring by equity blockholders is important for good corporate governance. A prominent theoretical literature argues that the threat of block sale ("exit") can be an affective governance mechanism. Many blockholders are money managers. We show that when money managers compete for...

What determines the direction of spread of currency crises? We examine data on waves of currency crises in 1992, 1994, 1997, and 1998 to evaluate several hypotheses on the determinants of contagion. We simultaneously consider trade competition, financial links, and institutional similarity to...