The paper studies a natural experiment in responsible investment conducted by the Japanese Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), the largest public pension fund in the world. In 2018 GPIF gave its largest passive manager a remunerated mandate to improve the environmental (E), social (S) and...

Twentieth century Japan provides a remarkable laboratory for examining how an externally imposed institutional and regulatory intervention affects the ownership of corporations. In the first half of the century, Japan had weak legal protection but strong institutional arrangements. The...

Corporate ownership and financing in Japan in the 20th century are striking. In the first half of the 20th century equity markets were active in raising more than 50% of the external financing of Japanese companies. Ownership was dispersed both by the standards of other developed economies at...

We analyze the monitoring efforts of a large active asset manager that involve high-level private meetings with portfolio firms that are unobservable to outsiders. Our analysis reveals the inner workings of the asset management organization based on detailed records of contacts with executives...

This paper provides evidence on the incidence, characteristics, and performance of activist engagements across countries. We find that the incidence of activism is greatest with high institutional ownership, particularly for U.S. institutions. We use a sample of 1,740 activist engagements across...

This article reports a unique analysis of private engagements by an activist fund. It is based on data made available to us by Hermes, the fund manager owned by the British Telecom Pension Scheme, on engagements with management in companies targeted by its U.K. Focus Fund (HUKFF). In contrast...