This paper explores the robustness of the positive association between shareholder rights and abnormal stock returns (using the Fama-French-Cahart four factor model) and potential explanations thereof. Utilizing hand-collected shareholder rights data for the 1978-1989 period in conjunction with...

This paper introduces a new hand-collected dataset tracking restrictions on shareholder rights at approximately 1,000 firms over 1978-1989. In conjunction with the 1990-2006 IRRC data, we track firms’ shareholder rights over thirty years. Most governance changes occurred during the 1980s. We...