Heterogeneity and peer effects in mutual fund proxy voting

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Matvos, Gregor; Ostrovsky, Michael
• 署名单位: University of Chicago; Stanford University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-405X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2010.03.014
• 发表日期: 2010
• 页码: 90-112
• 关键词: Proxy voting; Boards of directors; Director elections; Peer effects and strategic; complementarities; supermodular games

摘要

This paper studies voting in corporate director elections. We construct a comprehensive data set of 2,058,788 mutual fund votes over a two-year period. We find systematic heterogeneity in voting: some funds are consistently more management-friendly than others. We also establish the presence of peer effects: a fund is more likely to oppose management when other funds are more likely to oppose it, all else being equal. We estimate a voting model whose supermodular structure allows us to compute social multipliers due to peer effects. Heterogeneity and peer effects are as important in shaping voting outcomes as firm and director characteristics. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.