IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mnh/spaper/2533.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do shareholders vote strategically? Voting behavior, proposals screening, and majority rules

Author

Listed:
  • Maug, Ernst
  • Rydqvist, Kristian

Abstract

We study shareholder voting on management proposals. We build on a simple model of strategic voting, provide structural estimates of its parameters, and derive testable implications. The evidence suggests that voting is strategic in the sense that shareholders take into account the information of other shareholders when making their voting decisions. We conclude that strategic voting prevents incorrect rejections of management proposals.

Suggested Citation

  • Maug, Ernst & Rydqvist, Kristian, 2007. "Do shareholders vote strategically? Voting behavior, proposals screening, and majority rules," Papers 07-35, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
  • Handle: RePEc:mnh:spaper:2533
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://madoc.bib.uni-mannheim.de/2533/1/dp07_35.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Young, Philip J. & Millar, James A. & Glezen, G. William, 1993. "Trading volume, management solicitation, and shareholder voting," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 57-71, February.
    2. Gilat Levy, 2007. "Decision Making in Committees: Transparency, Reputation, and Voting Rules," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 150-168, March.
    3. Eddie Dekel & Michele Piccione, 2000. "Sequential Voting Procedures in Symmetric Binary Elections," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(1), pages 34-55, February.
    4. Matthias Messner & Mattias K. Polborn, 2004. "Voting on Majority Rules," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(1), pages 115-132.
    5. Timothy Feddersen & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 1997. "Voting Behavior and Information Aggregation in Elections with Private Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(5), pages 1029-1058, September.
    6. Timothy R. Burch & Angela G. Morgan & Jack G. Wolf, 2004. "Is Acquiring-Firm Shareholder Approval in Stock-for-Stock Mergers Perfunctory?," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 33(4), Winter.
    7. Philippe Aghion & Patrick Bolton, 2003. "Incomplete Social Contracts," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(1), pages 38-67, March.
    8. Becht, Marco & Bolton, Patrick & Roell, Ailsa, 2003. "Corporate governance and control," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 1, pages 1-109, Elsevier.
    9. DeAngelo, Harry & Rice, Edward M., 1983. "Antitakeover charter amendments and stockholder wealth," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1-4), pages 329-359, April.
    10. Brickley, James A. & Lease, Ronald C. & Smith, Clifford Jr., 1988. "Ownership structure and voting on antitakeover amendments," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1-2), pages 267-291, January.
    11. Feddersen, Timothy J & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 1996. "The Swing Voter's Curse," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 408-424, June.
    12. Brickley, James A. & Lease, Ronald C. & Smith, Clifford Jr., 1994. "Corporate voting: Evidence from charter amendment proposals," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 5-31, March.
    13. Nicola Persico, 2004. "Committee Design with Endogenous Information," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(1), pages 165-191.
    14. Ernst Maug & Bilge Yilmaz, 2002. "Two-Class Voting: A Mechanism for Conflict Resolution," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1448-1471, December.
    15. Ernst Maug & Bilge Yilmaz, 2002. "Two-Class Voting: A Mechanism for Conflict Resolution?," Levine's Working Paper Archive 391749000000000536, David K. Levine.
    16. Ernst Maug & Bilge Yilmaz, 2002. "Two-Class Voting: A Mechanism for Conflict Resolution?," NajEcon Working Paper Reviews 391749000000000536, www.najecon.org.
    17. Timothy J. Feddersen, 2004. "Rational Choice Theory and the Paradox of Not Voting," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(1), pages 99-112, Winter.
    18. Easterbrook, Frank H & Fischel, Daniel R, 1983. "Voting in Corporate Law," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(2), pages 395-427, June.
    19. Willard T. Carleton & James M. Nelson & Michael S. Weisbach, 1998. "The Influence of Institutions on Corporate Governance through Private Negotiations: Evidence from TIAA-CREF," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(4), pages 1335-1362, August.
    20. Morgan, Angela G. & Poulsen, Annette B., 2001. "Linking pay to performance--compensation proposals in the S&P 500," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 489-523, December.
    21. 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.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Rydqvist, Kristian & Maug, Ernst, 2004. "Do Shareholders vote Strategically? Evidence on the Advisory Role of Annual General Meetings," CEPR Discussion Papers 4192, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Van Wesep, Edward D., 2014. "The Idealized Electoral College voting mechanism and shareholder power," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(1), pages 90-108.
    3. Paolo Balduzzi & Clara Graziano & Annalisa Luporini, 2014. "Voting in small committees," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 111(1), pages 69-95, February.
    4. Iaryczower, Matias, 2007. "Strategic voting in sequential committees," Working Papers 1275, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
    5. Ian Ayres & Colin Rowat & Nasser Zakariya, 2004. "Optimal two stage committee voting rules," Game Theory and Information 0412006, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Bar-Isaac, Heski & Shapiro, Joel, 2020. "Blockholder voting," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(3), pages 695-717.
    7. Berliant, Marcus & Tabuchi, Takatoshi, 2011. "Local Politics and Economic Geography," MPRA Paper 29771, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. John Duffy & Sourav Bhattacharya & Sun-Tak Kim, 2012. "Compulsory versus Voluntary Voting: An Experimental Study," Working Paper 492, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Aug 2013.
    9. Stef Nicolae, 2017. "Voting Rules in Bankruptcy Law," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(1), pages 1-39, March.
    10. Bouton, Laurent & Castanheira, Micael & Llorente-Saguer, Aniol, 2016. "Divided majority and information aggregation: Theory and experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 114-128.
    11. Marcus Berliant & Takatoshi Tabuchi, 2014. "Local Politics And Economic Geography: Information Aggregation And Polarization," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(5), pages 806-827, November.
    12. Dal Bo, Ernesto, 2006. "Committees with supermajority voting yield commitment with flexibility," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(4-5), pages 573-599, May.
    13. Gershkov, Alex & Szentes, Balázs, 2009. "Optimal voting schemes with costly information acquisition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(1), pages 36-68, January.
    14. Ernst Maug & Bilge Yilmaz, "undated". "Two-Class Voting: A Mechanism for Conflict Resolution?," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 4-00, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    15. Cindy R. Alexander & Mark A. Chen & Duane J. Seppi & Chester S. Spatt, 2009. "The Role of Advisory Services in Proxy Voting," NBER Working Papers 15143, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Gersbach, Hans & Mamageishvili, Akaki & Tejada, Oriol, 2022. "Appointed learning for the common good: Optimal committee size and monetary transfers," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 153-176.
    17. Ernst Maug & Bilge Yilmaz, "undated". "Two-Class Voting: A Mechanism for Conflict Resolution?," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 04-00, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    18. Gine, Mireia & Moussawi, Rabih & Sedunov, John, 2017. "Governance mechanisms and effective activism: Evidence from shareholder proposals on poison pills," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 185-202.
    19. Büchel, Berno & Mechtenberg, Lydia & Wagner, Alexander F., 2023. "When Do Proxy Advisors Improve Corporate Decisions?," VfS Annual Conference 2023 (Regensburg): Growth and the "sociale Frage" 277704, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    20. Bouton, Laurent & Castanheira, Micael & Llorente-Saguer, Aniol, 2016. "Divided majority and information aggregation: Theory and experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 114-128.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    shareholder meeting ; proposal screening ; strategic voting ; supermajority rule;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance

    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:mnh:spaper:2533. 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: Katharina Rautenberg (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfmande.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.