Active Firms and Active Shareholders: Corporate Political Activity and Shareholder Proposals
研究发现，企业政治支出反映的政治倾向与股东政治偏好分歧越大，股东越可能提交环境或社会议题提案，尤其共和党倾向企业易被民主党倾向股东针对。
This article reveals the positions of corporations not only as active players in politics but also as targets of activist shareholders with opposing political preferences. We examine whether a firm’s political orientation, as measured by its political spending, serves as a driver of shareholder proposal submissions, one manifestation of shareholder activism. Using data on S&P 500 companies for 1997–2014, we find that the divergence in political orientation between shareholders and corporate management is strongly associated with the number of submissions of shareholder proposals on environmental or social issues. Firms that contribute more to the Republican Party are more likely to be targeted by nonindividual, Democratic-leaning shareholders. This pattern remains even after controlling for firms’ records of corporate social responsibility and labor relations. This finding implies that corporate political spending prompts shareholders with strong political preferences to target firms on the opposite end of the political spectrum.