We survey law firms, firms and institutional investors to better understand their preferred method of intracorporate dispute resolution in Brazil. Consistent with a number of theories, we find that these organizations prefer...
The explosion in ESG research has led to a strong reliance on ESG rating providers. We document widespread changes to the historical ratings of Refinitiv ESG, formerly ASSET4, a key rater. Across two downloads in 2018 and 2020, we...
We study whether carbon emissions affect the cross-section of U.S. stock returns. We find that stocks of firms with higher total CO2 emissions (and changes in emissions) earn higher returns, controlling for size, book-to-market, and...
We explore a novel survey on responsible investing by institutional investors around the world and match it to archival data on their equity portfolio holdings. We document that institutions that publicly commit to responsible...
In this contribution, we focus on the market for stewardship, as this has been developing in the UK. We observe that the 2020 UK Stewardship Code more clearly than previous stewardship codes (both in the UK and elsewhere) articulates the...
We study the nature of and outcomes from coordinated engagements by a prominent international network of long-term shareholders cooperating to influence firms on environmental and social issues. A two-tier engagement strategy,...
Recent research shows that a high wage gap between managers and workers identifies better-performing firms, but the stock market does not seem to price this information. In this paper, we show that not all investors neglect pay...
This paper frames a normative theory of stewardship engagement by large institutional investors and asset managers in terms of their theory of investment management – “Modern Portfolio Theory” -- which describes investors as...
We use the enactment of limited liability legislation across Canadian provinces to examine the effect of the change in liability status on firm outcomes for a group of public firms known as income trusts. We show that the switch from...
A growing number of studies suggest that common ownership caused cooperation among firms to increase and competition to decrease. We take a closer look at four approaches used to identify these effects. We find that the effects that some...
The debate on sustainable finance seldom includes the perspective of shareholders. However, shareholders are important for the governance of publicly held corporations today, because their holdings are concentrated in the hands of...
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...