This paper analyzes the effect that the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision on Citizens United vs. FEC had on corporate political activism. The decision opened the door for corporate treasuries to engage in independent political spending....Read more
We propose a novel way of measuring the portfolio-level environmental and social characteristics of 13F institutional investors (the “sustainability footprint”). We show that the environmental (social) footprint of institutional investors has...Read more
Passive investors—ETFs and index funds—are the most important development in modern-day capital markets, dictating trillions of dollars in capital flows and increasingly owning much of corporate America. Neither the business model of passive...Read more
We study the impact of institutional investors' “voice” on 201 going private tender offers by controlling shareholders ("freeze-out" offers) in Israel. Israeli regulatory intervention in freeze-out tender offers is relatively mild, thus...Read more
We show that there is cross-sectional variation in the quality of shareholder proposals. On average, the proposals submitted by the most active individual sponsors are less likely to be supported by a majority of votes, but they may pass if...Read more
This Article examines the large, steady, and continuing growth of the Big Three index fund managers—BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street Global Advisors. We show that there is a real prospect that index funds will continue to grow, and that...Read more
This article offers a theory of mutual fund voting to answer when mutual funds should vote on behalf of their investors and when they should not. It argues that voting authority for mutual funds ought to depend upon: (1) whether the fund...Read more
Using a novel text-based measure of top management team diversity, covering over 70,000 top executives in over 6,500 U.S. firms from 1999 to 2014, we show that analyst forecasts are systematically more pessimistic for firms with more diverse top...Read more
According to our survey about climate risk perceptions, institutional investors believe climate risks have financial implications for their portfolio firms and that these risks, particularly regulatory risks, already have begun to materialize....Read more
Hedge fund activism is associated with improvements in the governance and performance of targeted firms. In this paper, we show that these positive effects of activism reach beyond the targets, as non-targeted peers make similar improvements...Read more
For decades, corporate law played a pivotal role in regulating corporations across the United States. Consequently, Delaware, the leading state of incorporation, and its courts came to occupy a central and influential position in corporate law...Read more
This paper shows how network theory can improve our understanding of institutional investors’ voting behavior and, more generally, their role in corporate governance. The standard idea is that institutional investors compete against each other on...Read more