IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp8538.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Say Pays! Shareholder Voice and Firm Performance

Author

Listed:
  • Cuñat, Vicente

    (London School of Economics)

  • Giné, Mireia

    (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)

  • Guadalupe, Maria

    (INSEAD)

Abstract

This paper estimates the effects of Say-on-Pay (SoP); a policy that increases shareholder "voice" by providing shareholders with a regular vote on executive pay. We apply a regression discontinuity design to the votes on shareholder-sponsored SoP proposals. Adopting SoP leads to large increases in market value (4%) and to improvements in long-term performance: profitability and labor productivity increase, while overheads and investment fall. In contrast, we find limited effects on pay levels and structure. This suggests that SoP serves as a regular vote of confidence on the CEO, which leads to higher efficiency and market value.

Suggested Citation

  • Cuñat, Vicente & Giné, Mireia & Guadalupe, Maria, 2014. "Say Pays! Shareholder Voice and Firm Performance," IZA Discussion Papers 8538, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8538
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp8538.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Vicente Cuñat & Mireia Gine & Maria Guadalupe, 2012. "The Vote Is Cast: The Effect of Corporate Governance on Shareholder Value," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(5), pages 1943-1977, October.
    2. Gantchev, Nickolay, 2013. "The costs of shareholder activism: Evidence from a sequential decision model," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(3), pages 610-631.
    3. Larcker, David F. & Ormazabal, Gaizka & Taylor, Daniel J., 2011. "The market reaction to corporate governance regulation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(2), pages 431-448, August.
    4. Ashwini K. Agrawal, 2012. "Corporate Governance Objectives of Labor Union Shareholders: Evidence from Proxy Voting," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(1), pages 187-226.
    5. Core, John & Guay, Wayne, 1999. "The use of equity grants to manage optimal equity incentive levels," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 151-184, December.
    6. David S. Lee & Alexandre Mas, 2012. "Long-Run Impacts of Unions on Firms: New Evidence from Financial Markets, 1961--1999," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(1), pages 333-378.
    7. Ernst Maug & Kristian Rydqvist, 2009. "Do Shareholders Vote Strategically? Voting Behavior, Proposal Screening, and Majority Rules," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 13(1), pages 47-79.
    8. Fama, Eugene F, 1980. "Agency Problems and the Theory of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(2), pages 288-307, April.
    9. Fabrizio Ferri & David A. Maber, 2013. "Say on Pay Votes and CEO Compensation: Evidence from the UK," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 17(2), pages 527-563.
    10. David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2010. "Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 281-355, June.
    11. Cai, Jie & Walkling, Ralph A., 2011. "Shareholders’ Say on Pay: Does It Create Value?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(2), pages 299-339, April.
    12. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    13. Lee, David S., 2008. "Randomized experiments from non-random selection in U.S. House elections," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 675-697, February.
    14. Yonca Ertimur & Fabrizio Ferri & Volkan Muslu, 2011. "Shareholder Activism and CEO Pay," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(2), pages 535-592.
    15. McCrary, Justin, 2008. "Manipulation of the running variable in the regression discontinuity design: A density test," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 698-714, February.
    16. Stuart L. Gillan & Laura T. Starks, 2007. "The Evolution of Shareholder Activism in the United States," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 19(1), pages 55-73, January.
    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. Marco Becht & Julian Franks & Jeremy Grant & Hannes F. Wagner, 2017. "Returns to Hedge Fund Activism: An International Study," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(9), pages 2933-2971.
    2. Christopher S. Armstrong & Ian D. Gow & David F. Larcker, 2013. "The Efficacy of Shareholder Voting: Evidence from Equity Compensation Plans," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(5), pages 909-950, December.
    3. Maria Goranova & Rahi Abouk & Paul C. Nystrom & Ehsan S. Soofi, 2017. "Corporate governance antecedents to shareholder activism: A zero-inflated process," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(2), pages 415-435, February.
    4. Nadya Malenko & Yao Shen, 2016. "The Role of Proxy Advisory Firms: Evidence from a Regression-Discontinuity Design," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(12), pages 3394-3427.
    5. Armstrong, Christopher S. & Gow, Ian D. & Larcker, David F., 2012. "The Efficacy of Shareholder Voting: Evidence from Equity Compensation Plans," Research Papers 2097, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    6. Oehler, Andreas & Schmitz, Jonas Tobias, 2021. "Does intensified communication of hedge funds with letters affect abnormal returns?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 127-142.
    7. Correa, Ricardo & Lel, Ugur, 2016. "Say on pay laws, executive compensation, pay slice, and firm valuation around the world," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(3), pages 500-520.
    8. Cuñat, Vicente & Lu, Yiqing & Wu, Hong, 2021. "Managerial response to shareholder empowerment: evidence from majority- voting legislation changes," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118896, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Peter Iliev & Svetla Vitanova, 2019. "The Effect of the Say-on-Pay Vote in the United States," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(10), pages 4505-4521, October.
    10. Simon Rafaqat & Sana Rafaqat & Sahil Rafaqat & Saoul Rafaqat & Dawood Rafaqat, 2023. "Shareholder Activism and Firm Performance: A Review," Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, AMH International, vol. 14(4), pages 31-41.
    11. Kim, Jeong-Bon & Zhang, Eliza Xia & Zhong, Kai, 2021. "Does unionization affect the manager–shareholder conflict? Evidence from firm-specific stock price crash risk," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    12. Ormazabal, Gaizka, 2018. "The Role of Stakeholders in Corporate Governance: A View from Accounting Research," CEPR Discussion Papers 12775, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Erin E. Smith, 2019. "Are Antitakeover Amendments Good for Shareholders? Evidence from the Adoption of Antitakeover Provisions in the Post-SOX Era," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 9(04), pages 1-40, December.
    14. Daniel Bradley & Incheol Kim & Xuan Tian, 2017. "Do Unions Affect Innovation?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(7), pages 2251-2271, July.
    15. Denes, Matthew R. & Karpoff, Jonathan M. & McWilliams, Victoria B., 2017. "Thirty years of shareholder activism: A survey of empirical research," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 405-424.
    16. Caroline Flammer & Pratima Bansal, 2017. "Does a long-term orientation create value? Evidence from a regression discontinuity," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(9), pages 1827-1847, September.
    17. Yonca Ertimur & Fabrizio Ferri & David Oesch, 2013. "Shareholder Votes and Proxy Advisors: Evidence from Say on Pay," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(5), pages 951-996, December.
    18. Ferri, Fabrizio & Oesch, David, 2013. "Management Influence on Investors: Evidence from Shareholder Votes on the Frequency of Say on Pay," Working Papers on Finance 1329, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance.
    19. Michael R. Janse van Vuuren & Nadia Mans-Kemp & Suzette Viviers, 2023. "Who monitors the monitors? An examination of listed companies in an emerging market context," International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 20(3), pages 213-230, September.
    20. Dasgupta, Amil & Fos, Vyacheslav & Sautner, Zacharias, 2021. "Institutional investors and corporate governance," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 112114, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    executive compensation; corporate governance; say-on-pay;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance
    • M52 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:iza:izadps:dp8538. 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.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.