Voting on Public Goods: Citizens vs Shareholders

• 成果类型: Article; Early Access
• 署名作者: Dottling, Robin; Levit, Doron; Malenko, Nadya; Rola-Janicka, Magdalena
• 署名单位: Erasmus University Rotterdam; Erasmus University Rotterdam - Excl Erasmus MC; University of Washington; University of Washington Seattle; Boston College; Imperial College London
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF FINANCIAL STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0893-9454; 1465-7368
• DOI: 10.1093/rfs/hhag051
• 发表日期: 2026-06-08
• 关键词: D62; D72; G28; G34; G38; H23; political-economy; self-regulation; corporate; PRIVATE; RESPONSIBILITY; INVESTMENT; provision; welfare

摘要

We study the interplay between a one person-one vote political system and a one share-one vote corporate governance regime. If shareholders push firms for more prosocial policies, political backlash may arise, undoing these initiatives. If public policy is frictionless, shareholder democracy becomes irrelevant: the political system fully offsets shareholder influence. With public policy frictions, prosocial corporations can mitigate regulatory shortcomings and enhance corporate public goods provision. Nevertheless, shareholder democracy can hurt citizens due to the representation problem: it favors the preferences of the wealthy. Investor diversification, pass-through voting, and corporate greenwashing have important implications for these trade-offs of shareholder democracy.