The literature on shareholder voting has mostly focused on the influence of proxy advisors on shareholder votes. We exploit a unique empirical setting enabling us to provide a direct estimate of management's influence. Analyzing shareholder votes on the frequency of future say on pay votes, we...

In this paper, we investigate the damage to real-sector investment spending and corporate financing activities triggered by the failure of three major investment banks during the 2007-09 financial crisis. We find that firms characterized by pre-crisis corporate investment banking relationships...

We investigate the economic role of proxy advisors (PA) in the context of mandatory “say on pay” votes, a novel and complex item requiring significant firm-specific analysis. PA are more likely to issue an Against recommendation at firms with poor performance and higher levels of CEO pay and...

We examine the effect of a change in the director election system — the switch from a plurality voting standard to a more stringent standard known as majority voting (MV). Using a regression discontinuity design, we document abnormal returns of 1.43-1.60% around annual meeting dates where...

We investigate the economic role of proxy advisors (PAs) in the context of mandatory "say on pay" votes, a novel and complex item requiring significant firm-specific analysis. PAs are more likely to issue an Against recommendation at firms with poor performance and higher levels of CEO pay and...

In this paper, we construct the three-factor model introduced by Chen et al. (2010) for a European sample covering 10 countries from the European Monetary Union and the period from 1990 to 2006. Two key findings result. First, we show that the properties of the European factors are comparable to...

We examine the consequences of the highly anticipated and controversial Section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank Act, which mandates companies to disclose the CEO-to-median employee pay ratio starting from 2018. We address endogeneity concerns by using a regression discontinuity design around the public...

We investigate the causal effect of intangible capital on leverage. To address endogeneity, we exploit patent invalidations by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, where judges are randomly assigned to cases. Differences in judge leniency provide exogenous variation in the...

Does the impact of international Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) inspections extend beyond country borders of inspected auditors? We investigate this question by examining multinational business groups. Following initial PCAOB inspections of accounting firms auditing foreign...