Do institutional investors engage with companies on corporate externalities such as greenhouse gas emissions? And if so, why? We study voting at shareholder meetings by two emblematic global investors: BlackRock, a major asset manager, and the Norway Fund, a responsible sovereign wealth fund....

This paper tests whether very diversified and patient investors, also known as universal owners, tend to vote in favor of shareholder resolutions instructing corporations to reduce or communicate on the negative externalities they produce. Our sample includes 213 US fund families that voted on...

The question of whether and how partial common-ownership links between strategically interacting firms affect firm behavior has been the subject of theoretical inquiry for decades. Since then, consolidation and increasing concentration in the asset-management industry has led to more pronounced...

We show that the main claim in Dennis, Gerardi, and Schenone (JF forthcoming) (DGS), namely “that the documented positive correlation between common ownership and ticket prices stems from the market share component of the common ownership measure, and not the ownership and control...

We construct a novel data set to show that, between 2003-2020, up to one-fifth of America’s largest firms had a non-financial blockholder or insider as their largest shareholder. Blockholders and insiders tend to be less diversified than institutional investors. Measures of “universal” and...

The question of whether and how partial common-ownership links between strategically interacting firms affect firm objectives and behavior has been the subject of theoretical inquiry for decades. Since then, the growth of intermediated asset management and consolidation in the asset management...

The share of stocks beneficially owned by institutional investors has increased substantially over the last three decades. Together with a high and increasing level of concentration in the asset management industry, this trend implies that a small number of institutional investors now constitute...

A fast-growing legal literature commenting on a set of empirical papers alleging anticompetitive effects of common ownership claims that the reported effects, if true, would imply that corporate executives violate their fiduciary duty: whereas acting in the interest of common owners can help...

Competition requires that firms have incentives to compete. Common ownership reduces these incentives. There is no known reason or mechanism by which firms are supposed to compete in the absence of incentives to do so. All arguments in the defense of the asset management industry amount to a...