It seems to me that when it comes to corporate governance, many are willing to advocate for change but few are willing to do the hard work of analysis of the actual impacts of change. As I like to say, corporate governance has become all prescription and no diagnosis. Thus, I was excited to read this paper by Jay Cai, Jacqueline Garner and Ralph Walkling at Drexel University.

In “Paper Tiger? An Empirical Analysis of Majoirty Voting”, Professors Cai, Garner and Walkling note that while majority voting has been “the dominant theme in the most recent proxy seasons”, very little empirical evidence exists on the practice. In other words, a lot of people have been trumpeting majority voting without any evidence to support its efficacy. This study tries to fill this rather considerable lacuna. Here are some of their principal conclusions...