Distracted Shareholders and Corporate Actions

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kempf, Elisabeth; Manconi, Alberto; Spalt, Oliver
• 署名单位: University of Chicago; Tilburg University; Bocconi University
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF FINANCIAL STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0893-9454
• DOI: 10.1093/rfs/hhw082
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 1660
• 关键词: institutional investors; earnings management; MARKET-EFFICIENCY; governance; firm; DIRECTORS; acquisitions; performance; attention; BEHAVIOR

摘要

Investor attention matters for corporate actions. Our new identification approach constructs firm-level shareholder distraction measures, by exploiting exogenous shocks to unrelated parts of institutional shareholders' portfolios. Firms with distracted shareholders are more likely to announce diversifying, value-destroying, acquisitions. They are also more likely to grant opportunistically timed CEO stock options, more likely to cut dividends, and less likely to fire their CEO for bad performance. Firms with distracted shareholders have abnormally low stock returns. Combined, these patterns are consistent with a model in which the unrelated shock shifts investor attention, leading to a temporary loosening of monitoring constraints.