How Close Are Close Shareholder Votes?
研究发现股东提案的投票结果在50%门槛处存在密度不连续下降，管理层更可能险胜，表明股东通过投票施加影响的能力受管理层制约。
Abstract We show that close votes on shareholder proposals are disproportionately more likely to be won by management than by shareholder activists. Using a sample of shareholder proposals from 2003 to 2016, we uncover a large and discontinuous drop in the density of voting results at the 50% threshold. We document similar patterns for say on pay votes and director elections. Our findings imply that shareholder influence through voting is limited by managerial opposition. It also follows that one cannot routinely use an RDD to identify the causal effects of changes in corporate governance generated by shareholder votes. Received May 29, 2017; editorial decision August 21, 2018 by Editor Itay Goldstein. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.