Counting on my vote not counting: Expressive voting in committees

Ginzburg, Boris; Guerra, José-Alberto; Lekfuangfu, Warn N.

doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104555

Cited by 9 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…In line with the theoretical predictions, we expect that shareholders who have the power to affect the outcome will tend to vote less strategically (in the sense of not voting according to their economic interests), especially when the decision to vote involves opposing management. In connection with strategic voting, Ginzburg et al (2022) maintain that shareholders are liable to vote against a favored outcome if they can derive utility from the act of voting itself. This behavior, however, occurs only if the shareholder is small enough not to affect the outcome of the vote.…”

Section: Related Literature and Research Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Doing the Right Thing? The Voting Power Effect and Institutional Shareholder Voting

Dressler

Mugerman

2022

J Bus Ethics

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Through a combination of a controlled experiment and a survey, we examine the effect of voting power on shareholders' voting behavior at general meetings. To avoid a selection bias, common in archival voting data, we exogenously manipulate shareholders' power to affect the outcome. Our findings suggest that, when it comes to corporate decisions involving conflicts of interest, voting power nudges shareholders to oppose management and to choose the "right" alternative, that is, vote against a proposal which prima facie does not serve the company's best interest. This effect obtained even when the dissenting vote contravened the choices of all other voters. Furthermore, the drive "to do the right thing" was established as significant, above and beyond the size of the economic stake. We also demonstrate that strategic voting among institutional investors is contingent on voting power: when in a position to affect the outcome of a vote, institutional investors tend to eschew strategic considerations and display fewer consistent patterns in their voting, compared to situations in which their ability to make a difference is limited. In anticipation of a "bad" proposal to be put to vote at the general shareholder meeting, institutional investors prefer to negotiate terms with management beforehand, and vote against it only after such negotiations fail. Our results shed new light on the "behind the scenes" processes in shareholder voting and underscore the importance of institutional investor agency to corporate governance, accountability, and minority shareholder representation. Keywords Voting power • Shareholder voting • Business ethics • Corporate governance JEL Classification G23 • G30 • G38With great power comes great responsibility.

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Section: Related Literature and Research Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Doing the Right Thing? The Voting Power Effect and Institutional Shareholder Voting

Dressler

Mugerman

2022

J Bus Ethics

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“…2 Spiller & Bolle (2017) also vary the size of the group and the magnitude of the threshold, but do not focus on the probability of success. Ginzburg et al (2022) examine the effect of group size and threshold in a setting in which achieving critical mass entails costs rather than benefits.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical Mass in Collective Action

2023

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The expressive power of voting rules

Bourgeois-Gironde,

Ferreira

2023

Soc Choice Welf

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Different voting rules are commonly used to settle collective decisions. A promising way to assess voting rules, for which little is known, is to compare the expressive utility that voters derive from voting with each rule. In this paper, we first propose a simple ordinal model of expressive voting that allows us to compare voting rules in terms of the expressive utility that voters can derive from voting (their expressive power). Our model provides a novel testable implication according to which expected turnout increases with expressive power. We then ran an online experiment testing this implication in a controlled environment. We find that if voters are made aware of alternative voting rules, turnout is higher in voting rules with higher expressive power. Our results also show that higher expressive power is associated with a better representation of voters’ actual preferences and, according to our model, higher expressive utility. This suggests that the expressive power of voting rules is a relevant criterion when choosing between voting rules for economic and political decisions.

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Counting on my vote not counting: Expressive voting in committees

Cited by 9 publications

References 54 publications

Doing the Right Thing? The Voting Power Effect and Institutional Shareholder Voting

Doing the Right Thing? The Voting Power Effect and Institutional Shareholder Voting

Critical Mass in Collective Action

The expressive power of voting rules

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