The Efficacy of Shareholder Voting in Staggered and Non-Staggered Boards: The Case of Audit Committee Elections
研究了股东投票能否影响审计委员会，以及这种影响在非交错和交错董事会中是否一致。发现投票能提升审计委员会效能，但仅适用于非交错董事会，为交错董事会表现较弱提供了新解释。
SUMMARY We examine whether shareholder votes can influence the audit committee and whether this influence is uniform across non-staggered and staggered boards. We find that through voting, shareholders can increase the efficacy of the audit committee, leading to improvements in audit committee structure, diligence, and financial reporting quality. These results hold only in firms with non-staggered boards, underscoring the need to separately examine staggered and non-staggered boards. Importantly, the non-responsiveness of staggered audit committees to shareholder disapproval presents an additional explanation for the weaker performance that is often documented for firms with staggered boards. Overall, our results support the movement to de-stagger boards.