Publications

August 2014
Article

Friends in High Places

By: Lauren Cohen and Christopher Malloy

We demonstrate that personal connections amongst U.S. politicians have a significant impact on Senate voting behavior. Networks based on alumni connections between politicians are consistent predictors of voting behavior. We estimate sharp measures that control for... View Details

Keywords: Vote Trading; Networks; Legislation; Logrolling; Earmarks; Voting; Government Legislation; Social and Collaborative Networks; United States

July 28, 2022
Article

DAO Governance Attacks, and How to Avoid Them

By: Pranav Garimidi, Scott Duke Kominers and Tim Roughgarden

Many web3 projects embrace permissionless voting using a fungible and tradable native token. Permissionless voting can offer many benefits, from lowering barriers to entry to increasing competition. Token holders can use their tokens to vote on a range of issues—from... View Details

Keywords: Crypto Economy; Cryptocurrency; Governance; Voting; Decentralized Autonomous Organizations; Organizational Structure; Digital Platforms

September 2024 (Revised October 2024)
Background Note

Brief Note on How America Votes and U.S. Election Structural Issues (2024)

By: Robert F. White

This note describes how American votes, and explores several structural issues to U.S. elections. View Details

Keywords: Political Elections; Public Administration Industry; United States

Educators

Purchase

2017
Working Paper

Peer Effects on the United States Supreme Court

By: Matthew Lilley, Richard Holden and Michael Keane

Using data on essentially every US Supreme Court decision since 1946, we estimate a model of peer effects on the Court. We consider both the impact of justice ideology and justice votes on the votes of their peers. To identify these peer effects we use two instruments.... View Details

Keywords: Supreme Court; Peer Effects; Voting Behavior; Legal System; Courts and Trials; Voting; Behavior

SSRN

July 2019
Article

I Know Why You Voted for Trump: (Over)inferring Motives Based on Choice

By: Kate Barasz, Tami Kim and Ioannis Evangelidis

People often speculate about why others make the choices they do. This paper investigates how such inferences are formed as a function of what is chosen. Specifically, when observers encounter someone else's choice (e.g., of political candidate), they use the chosen... View Details

Keywords: Self-other Difference; Social Perception; Inference-making; Preferences; Consumer Behavior; Prediction; Prediction Error; Decision Choices and Conditions; Perception; Behavior; Forecasting and Prediction

2020
Working Paper

On the Representativeness of Voter Turnout

By: Louis Kaplow and Scott Duke Kominers

Prominent theory research on voting uses models in which expected pivotality drives voters' turnout decisions and hence determines voting outcomes. It is recognized, however, that such work is at odds with Downs's paradox: in practice, many individuals turn out for... View Details

Keywords: Voter Turnout; Paradox Of Voting; Pivotality; Elections; Model; Voting; Behavior; Theory

December 2013
Article

Legislating Stock Prices

By: Lauren Cohen, Karl Diether and Christopher Malloy

We demonstrate that legislation has a simple, yet previously undetected impact on stock prices. Exploiting the voting record of legislators whose constituents are the affected industries, we show that the votes of these "interested" legislators capture important... View Details

Keywords: Legislator Incentives; Voting; Return Predictability; Lobbying; Motivation and Incentives; Government Legislation; Stocks

27 Sep 1991 - 28 Sep 1991
Lecture

Takeover Bids and the Relative Prices of Shares that Differ in their Voting Rights

By: W. Carl Kester

Keywords: Stock Shares

October 2013 (Revised September 2014)
Case

The TELUS Share Conversion Proposal

By: Lucy White, Benjamin C. Esty and Lisa Mazzanti

On February 21, 2013, TELUS announced a proposal to convert the firm's non-voting shares into voting shares on a one-to-one basis, thereby eliminating the firm's dual class structure. Shareholders were scheduled to vote on the proposal at the firm's annual general... View Details

Educators

Purchase

5 Oct 2018
Other Presentation

Voting Trusts and Antitrust in Illinois: Rethinking the Role of State Corporation Law in Competition Policy

By: Laura Phillips Sawyer and Naomi R. Lamoreaux

Keywords: Laws and Statutes; Illinois

2021
Working Paper

Once Bitten, Twice Shy: Learning from Corporate Fraud and Corporate Governance Spillovers

By: Trung Nguyen

This paper finds that investors learn from their experience with corporate fraud and financial misconduct and modify their investment behavior to avoid suspicious firms and increase corporate governance efforts. More specially, mutual funds that experienced corporate... View Details

Keywords: Institutional Investors; Investor Experience; Shareholder Voting; Corporate Fraud; Corporate Governance; Institutional Investing; Behavior; Change; Learning

October 2016
Case

U.S. Presidential Campaign 2016: Marketing Communication Strategy

By: Robert J. Dolan

On October 18, 2016, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump began the last three weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign by preparing for the next day's third and final presidential debate. Tuesday, November 8 was Election Day, but in... View Details

Keywords: Election Outcomes; Voting Behavior; Voting; Marketing Communications; Political Elections; United States

Educators

Mar 2018
Conference Presentation

Antitrust and Voting Trusts in Illinois: Rethinking the Role of State Corporation Law in Competition Policy

By: Naomi R. Lamoreaux and Laura Phillips Sawyer

March 2009
Article

The Impact of Shareholder Activism on Financial Reporting and Compensation: The Case of Employee Stock Options Expensing

By: F. Ferri and Tatiana Sandino

We examine the economic consequences of more than 150 shareholder proposals to expense employee stock options (ESO) submitted during the proxy seasons of 2003 and 2004, the first case in which the SEC allowed a shareholder vote on an accounting matter. Our results... View Details

Keywords: Shareholder Activism; Shareholder Votes; Stock Option Expensing; Executive Compensation; Financial Reporting; Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Corporate Governance; Business and Shareholder Relations; Investment Activism

SSRN

March 2014 (Revised May 2014)
Teaching Note

The TELUS Share Conversion Proposal

By: Lucy White and Benjamin C. Esty

On February 21, 2013, TELUS announced a proposal to convert the firm's non-voting shares into voting shares on a one-to-one basis, thereby eliminating the firm's dual class structure. Shareholders were scheduled to vote on the proposal at the firm's annual general... View Details

Purchase

Jun 2018
Conference Presentation

Voting Trusts and Antitrust in Illinois: Rethinking the Role of State Corporation Law in Competition Policy

By: N. Lamoreaux and Laura Phillips Sawyer

2020
Working Paper

Are ISS Recommendations Informative? Evidence from Assessments of Compensation Practices

By: Ana Albuquerque, Mary Ellen Carter and Susanna Gallani

Using detailed information from the largest proxy advisor in the U.S., Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), we examine whether proxy advisors’ assessments of firms’ compensation practices are able to identify poor compensation practices as measured by subsequent... View Details

Keywords: Proxy Advisors; CEO Compensation; Say-on-Pay; Institutional Shareholder Voting; Executive Compensation; Performance

SSRN

July 2021
Article

Do Interactions with Candidates Increase Voter Support and Participation? Experimental Evidence from Italy

By: Enrico Cantoni and Vincent Pons

We test whether politicians can use direct contact to reconnect with citizens, increase turnout, and win votes. During the 2014 Italian municipal elections, we randomly assigned 26,000 voters to receive visits from city council candidates, from canvassers supporting... View Details

Keywords: Campaigns; Candidates; Elections; Experiment; Political Parties; Turnout; Voting Behavior; Voting; Political Elections; Behavior; Interpersonal Communication; Italy