Effects of runoff voting rules on number of parties and candidates' political experience: Evidence from a law change in Peru

We study the effect of a change in electoral rules on political competition, measured by the number of candidates and their political experience. We explore the effects of a change in legislation, introduced a year before the gubernatorial elections in Peru on the number of parties that participated in these elections. We also investigate how the legislative change affected the political experience of the candidates. Given that the legislative change did not apply to elections for provincial mayors, we use those elections as a control group, in a difference-in-differences design. Our estimates show the number of parties registered increased by a margin of around 2.2 after the legislative change. The change also increased the candidates' years of accumulated political experience, particularly in the subsequent gubernatorial elections.     

Endogenous political competition and political accountability

We contribute to the debate over the effectiveness of elections in motivating incumbents to perform well. We show that with endogenous political competition the effectiveness of democracy in disciplining officials can be largely diminished.     

Does a deviation between the rights and obligations of the board and controlling shareholders affect firm value？

This study examines the association between firm value and ownership structure, when board and controlling stockholders＇ voting rights deviate from obligations. The measurement of the corporate governance variables is different from prior research. The author further investigates whether monitoring mechanisms can alleviate the agency problem due to percentage of outside directors. The empirical results show that the higher board voting rights-obligations is deviated, which means the weaker relation with the firm value. The author also finds the monitoring from outside directors can reduce the agency problems from board＇s deviation and thus can improve firm value. But the results of the controlling stockholders＇ deviation are mixed or insignificant. This research has implications for Taiwan＇s regulators who are striving to improve the information, transparency, and corporate governance of board and controlling shareholders＇ voting rights-obligations deviation.     

The Secretary Problem Revisited - The Group Decision-Making Perspective

We consider a decision situation where there is an initial set of alternatives that may be augmented, a variant of the problem known in the literature as the "secretary problem". We focus the discussion on the special case of group decision-making, where a group or committee is charged with the responsibility of negotiating the decision. We investigate situations of explicitly stated (multiple) criteria and the simpler situation of no such stated criteria. The former case includes the congenial, the mixed, and the uncongenial cases, where the individuals agree on the direction of all, some, or none of the criteria, respectively. We offer a framework within which a group of individuals can be supported in such a decision process. In the case of explicit criteria, we provide the decision-makers with probability information of the likelihood of finding more preferred alternatives provided the initial set of alternatives is expanded. The framework is tested using a simulated real-world choice situation.     

Uniformity Requirement and Political Accountability

This paper discusses the fundamental hypothesis of policy uniformity under centralized decision making, which underlies Oates' famous decentralization theorem. The theorem has, in more recent times, come under pressure owing to the prediction that local public goods are provided to minimum winning coalitions rather than uniformly. The focus of this paper is on the impact of uniformity rules on political accountability. Using the concept of minimum winning coalitions, it is shown that the power of voters over politicians vanishes if election districts receive different levels of local public goods. However, the setting up of sufficiently strong uniformity rules means that voters regain power. According to Oates' theorem, uniformity is the main disadvantage of centralization but, according to the analysis undertaken in this paper, centralization without uniformity would be even worse.     

刍论公司章程限制股东表决权制度的架构

通过首次对表决权限制制度进行分类,并梳理章程限制表决权的架构.发现,新公司法提供了较之以往更大的自治空间,使得章程制定者能够考虑采取恰当的措施去限制表决权的滥用行为,提高公司治理水平.     

基于股权结构的超级多数条款设计——对解决我国上市公司“大股东控制”问题的探索

“大股东控制”是制约我国上市公司治理水平的重要因素。为了提高上市公司治理水平,委托投票制度、特别事项超级多数条款、累计投票制度、关联股东回避制度、网络投票制度以及类别股东投票制度等一系列制度先后被引入。这些制度设计在一定程度上起到了积极作用。然而其效果比较有限。我们认为,针对特殊的股权结构,应当制定与之相匹配的投票制度,才能体现股东平等的原则。本文从法定投票通过率和股东控制权的关系出发,通过构造一个动态联盟博弈模型,设计了一项“针对股权结构的超级多数条款”的投票制度。从公平角度设计的该制度有助于化解当前我国证券市场的“大股东控制”问题。     

表决权差异安排规制比较研究——以中概股企业赴港二次上市切入

许可科创企业采用表决权差异安排,成为亚太各法域竞争上市资源的新兴策略.其本质在于探索上市公司权力结构变革,该变革催生重构相应规制体系的需求.中概股企业赴港二次上市,串联起中国大陆、中国香港和美国等法域规制实践.中国大陆相应实践尚在起步阶段,其设计逻辑深受美国、中国香港等域外实践影响,相应经验主要源自海外上市的中概股样本.立足中国大陆的制度情境,充分发挥双层股权结构的促进效益离不开适当的规制体系.基于系统比较不同实践和规制进路,可为绸缪优化中国大陆表决权差异安排规制提供切口,亦有望增益上市公司治理经验.     

Ecological Fallacy and Covariates: New Insights based on Multilevel Modelling of Individual Data

The paper provides a new and more explicit formulation of the assumptions needed by the ordinary ecological regression to provide unbiased estimates and clarifies why violations of these assumptions will affect any method of ecological inference. Empirical evidence is obtained by showing that estimates provided by three main ecological inference methods are heavily biased when compared with multilevel logistic regression applied to a unique set of individual data on voting behaviour. The main findings of our paper have two important implications that can be extended to all situations where the assumptions needed to apply ecological inference are violated in the data: (i) only ecological inference methods that allow one to model the effect of covariates have a chance to produce unbiased estimates, and (ii) there are certain data generating mechanisms producing a kind of bias in ecological estimates that cannot be corrected by modelling the effect of covariates.     

Firm performance and mutual fund voting

We employ a new comprehensive proxy voting records database to investigate whether mutual funds consider prior firm performance when they vote on a diverse range of management- and shareholder-sponsored proposals relating to governance, compensation, and director election. We argue that prior firm performance plays a role in the monitoring effort of mutual funds as they fulfill their fiduciary duties. Results show that voting is related to prior firm performance for selected management and shareholder proposals and that it is consistent with Institutional Shareholder Services’ recommendations. Mutual funds support management (shareholder) proposals less (more) when prior firm performance has been weak. Furthermore, even when mutual funds deviate from their fund family’s voting policies, they attach importance to prior firm performance, and their voting is, to a certain degree, affected by business ties.