IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/25717.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Investor Ideology

Author

Listed:
  • Patrick Bolton
  • Tao Li
  • Enrichetta Ravina
  • Howard L. Rosenthal

Abstract

We estimate institutional investor preferences based on their proxy voting records in publicly listed Russell 3000 firms. We employ a spatial model of proxy voting, the W-NOMINATE method for scaling legislatures, and map institutional investors onto a left-right dimension based on their votes for fiscal year 2012. The far-left are socially responsible and the far-right are “money conscious” investors. Significant ideological differences reflect an absence of shareholder unanimity. The proxy adviser ISS, similar to a political leader, makes voting recommendations that place it in the center; to the left of most mutual funds. Public pension funds and other investors on the left support a more social and environment-friendly orientation of the firm and fewer executive compensation proposals. A second dimension reflects a more traditional governance view, with management disciplinarian investors, the proxy adviser Glass-Lewis among them, pitted against more management friendly ones.

Suggested Citation

  • Patrick Bolton & Tao Li & Enrichetta Ravina & Howard L. Rosenthal, 2019. "Investor Ideology," NBER Working Papers 25717, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25717
    Note: CF EEE POL
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w25717.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1979. "A Theory of Competitive Equilibrium in Stock Market Economies," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(2), pages 293-329, March.
    2. Yoshio Takane & Forrest Young & Jan Leeuw, 1977. "Nonmetric individual differences multidimensional scaling: An alternating least squares method with optimal scaling features," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 42(1), pages 7-67, March.
    3. Peter Iliev & Michelle Lowry, 2015. "Are Mutual Funds Active Voters?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(2), pages 446-485.
    4. He, Jie (Jack) & Huang, Jiekun & Zhao, Shan, 2019. "Internalizing governance externalities: The role of institutional cross-ownership," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(2), pages 400-418.
    5. Matvos, Gregor & Ostrovsky, Michael, 2010. "Heterogeneity and peer effects in mutual fund proxy voting," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 90-112, October.
    6. Yair Listokin, 2008. "Management Always Wins the Close Ones," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 10(2), pages 159-184.
    7. Nadya Malenko & Yao Shen, 2016. "The Role of Proxy Advisory Firms: Evidence from a Regression-Discontinuity Design," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(12), pages 3394-3427.
    8. JOSEPH A. McCAHERY & ZACHARIAS SAUTNER & LAURA T. STARKS, 2016. "Behind the Scenes: The Corporate Governance Preferences of Institutional Investors," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(6), pages 2905-2932, December.
    9. J. Carroll & Jih-Jie Chang, 1970. "Analysis of individual differences in multidimensional scaling via an n-way generalization of “Eckart-Young” decomposition," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 35(3), pages 283-319, September.
    10. Tao Li, 2018. "Outsourcing Corporate Governance: Conflicts of Interest Within the Proxy Advisory Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(6), pages 2951-2971, June.
    11. Davis, Gerald F. & Kim, E. Han, 2007. "Business ties and proxy voting by mutual funds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 552-570, August.
    12. Daniel L. McFadden, 1976. "Quantal Choice Analysis: A Survey," NBER Chapters, in: Annals of Economic and Social Measurement, Volume 5, number 4, pages 363-390, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Hart, Oliver & Zingales, Luigi, 2017. "Companies Should Maximize Shareholder Welfare Not Market Value," Journal of Law, Finance, and Accounting, now publishers, vol. 2(2), pages 247-275, November.
    14. Wei Jiang & Tao Li & Danqing Mei, 2018. "Influencing Control: Jawboning in Risk Arbitrage," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(6), pages 2635-2675, December.
    15. Dragana Cvijanović & Amil Dasgupta & Konstantinos E. Zachariadis, 2016. "Ties That Bind: How Business Connections Affect Mutual Fund Activism," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(6), pages 2933-2966, December.
    16. Chou, Julia & Ng, Lilian & Wang, Qinghai, 2011. "Are better governed funds better monitors?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 1254-1271.
    17. Grossman, Sanford J & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1977. "On Value Maximization and Alternative Objectives of the Firm," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 389-402, May.
    18. Alexander W. Butler & Umit G. Gurun, 2012. "Educational Networks, Mutual Fund Voting Patterns, and CEO Compensation," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(8), pages 2533-2562.
    19. Poole, Keith T., 2000. "Nonparametric Unfolding of Binary Choice Data," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(3), pages 211-237, March.
    20. Jennifer E. Bethel & Stuart L. Gillan, 2002. "The Impact of the Institutional and Regulatory Environment on Shareholder Voting," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 31(4), Winter.
    21. Ashraf, Rasha & Jayaraman, Narayanan & Ryan, Harley E., 2012. "Do Pension-Related Business Ties Influence Mutual Fund Proxy Voting? Evidence from Shareholder Proposals on Executive Compensation," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(3), pages 567-588, June.
    22. Jan Leeuw & Forrest Young & Yoshio Takane, 1976. "Additive structure in qualitative data: An alternating least squares method with optimal scaling features," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 41(4), pages 471-503, December.
    23. Clinton, Joshua & Jackman, Simon & Rivers, Douglas, 2004. "The Statistical Analysis of Roll Call Data," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 98(2), pages 355-370, May.
    24. Yonca Ertimur & Fabrizio Ferri & David Oesch, 2013. "Shareholder Votes and Proxy Advisors: Evidence from Say on Pay," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(5), pages 951-996, December.
    25. repec:oup:revfin:v:29:y:2016:i:12:p:3394-3427. is not listed on IDEAS
    26. Jay C. Hartzell, 2004. "What's In It for Me? CEOs Whose Firms Are Acquired," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(1), pages 37-61.
    27. Royce Carroll & Jeffrey B. Lewis & James Lo & Keith T. Poole & Howard Rosenthal, 2013. "The Structure of Utility in Spatial Models of Voting," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(4), pages 1008-1028, October.
    28. Forrest Young & Jan Leeuw & Yoshio Takane, 1976. "Regression with qualitative and quantitative variables: An alternating least squares method with optimal scaling features," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 41(4), pages 505-529, December.
    29. Lucian A. Bebchuk & Scott Hirst, 2019. "Index Funds and the Future of Corporate Governance: Theory, Evidence, and Policy," NBER Working Papers 26543, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    30. Gillan, Stuart L. & Starks, Laura T., 2000. "Corporate governance proposals and shareholder activism: the role of institutional investors," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 275-305, August.
    31. Morgan, Angela & Poulsen, Annette & Wolf, Jack & Yang, Tina, 2011. "Mutual funds as monitors: Evidence from mutual fund voting," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 914-928, September.
    32. K. J. Martijn Cremers & Roberta Romano, 2011. "Institutional Investors and Proxy Voting on Compensation Plans: The Impact of the 2003 Mutual Fund Voting Disclosure Rule," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 13(1), pages 220-268.
    33. Sanford J. Grossman & Oliver D. Hart, 1980. "Takeover Bids, the Free-Rider Problem, and the Theory of the Corporation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 11(1), pages 42-64, Spring.
    34. Appel, Ian R. & Gormley, Todd A. & Keim, Donald B., 2016. "Passive investors, not passive owners," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 111-141.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Moritz Hennicke, 2022. "Essays on Firm Ownership, Political Preferences and Welfare," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/350745, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    2. José Azar & Xavier Vives, 2021. "General Equilibrium Oligopoly and Ownership Structure," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(3), pages 999-1048, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Farizo, Joseph D., 2022. "(Black)Rock the vote: Index funds and opposition to management," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    2. Dasgupta, Amil & Fos, Vyacheslav & Sautner, Zacharias, 2021. "Institutional investors and corporate governance," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 112114, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Wang, Xianjue, 2022. "Disloyal managers and proxy voting," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 44(C).
    4. Duan, Ying & Jiao, Yawen & Tam, Kinsun, 2021. "Conflict of interest and proxy voting by institutional investors," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    5. Schwartz-Ziv, Miriam & Wermers, Russ, 2022. "Do institutional investors monitor their large-scale vs. small-scale investments differently? Evidence from the say-on-pay vote," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    6. Jiekun Huang, 2023. "Thy Neighbor’s Vote: Peer Effects in Proxy Voting," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(7), pages 4169-4189, July.
    7. Brav, Alon & Cain, Matthew & Zytnick, Jonathon, 2022. "Retail shareholder participation in the proxy process: Monitoring, engagement, and voting," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 492-522.
    8. Calluzzo, Paul & Kedia, Simi, 2019. "Mutual fund board connections and proxy voting," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(3), pages 669-688.
    9. Aneel Keswani & David Stolin & Anh L. Tran, 2017. "Frenemies: How Do Financial Firms Vote on Their Own Kind?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(3), pages 631-654, March.
    10. Dressler, Efrat, 2020. "Voice and power: Do institutional shareholders make use of their voting power?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    11. Efrat Dressler & Yevgeny Mugerman, 2023. "Doing the Right Thing? The Voting Power Effect and Institutional Shareholder Voting," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 183(4), pages 1089-1112, April.
    12. Hshieh, Shenje & Li, Jiasun & Tang, Yingcong, 2021. "How do passive funds act as active owners? Evidence from mutual fund voting records11We are grateful for extremely helpful comments from one anonymous referee, Antonio Bernardo, Audra Boone, Mark Garm," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    13. Ding, Rong & Hou, Wenxuan & Kuo, Jing-Ming & Lee, Edward, 2013. "Fund ownership and stock price informativeness of Chinese listed firms," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 166-185.
    14. Dimmock, Stephen G. & Gerken, William C. & Ivković, Zoran & Weisbenner, Scott J., 2018. "Capital gains lock-in and governance choices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(1), pages 113-135.
    15. Bar-Isaac, Heski & Shapiro, Joel, 2020. "Blockholder voting," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(3), pages 695-717.
    16. Nain, Amrita & Yao, Tong, 2013. "Mutual fund skill and the performance of corporate acquirers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(2), pages 437-456.
    17. Tao Li, 2018. "Outsourcing Corporate Governance: Conflicts of Interest Within the Proxy Advisory Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(6), pages 2951-2971, June.
    18. Nadya Malenko & Yao Shen, 2016. "The Role of Proxy Advisory Firms: Evidence from a Regression-Discontinuity Design," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(12), pages 3394-3427.
    19. Li, Xuan, 2023. "Home bias in shareholder voting," Discussion Papers 2023/21, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    20. Crane, Alan D. & Koch, Andrew & Michenaud, Sébastien, 2019. "Institutional investor cliques and governance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(1), pages 175-197.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25717. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.