The Political Economy of Investor Protection 公开

Kerner, Andrew Michael (2009)

Permanent URL: https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/cc08hf863?locale=zh
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Abstract The Political Economy of Investor Protection By Andrew Kerner Adequate legal protections for minority shareholders are a powerful determinant of capital market performance and economic growth, yet there is surprising variation across countries and across US states in the extent to which minority shareholders are protected from rent- seeking by corporate insiders. My dissertation seeks to explain this variation. On the basis of a formal model that builds on work by Grossman and Helpman (1996), Rogowski and Kayser (2002) and others, I hypothesize that the key drivers of corporate governance and securities law policies are 1) the vulnerability of incumbent governments to economic voting, which is itself a function of political institutions, 2) competitive pressures to attract investment capital by enacting shareholder-friendly laws and 3) the role of institutional investors, particularly large pension funds, in the lobbying process. I test my hypotheses in three substantively and methodologically distinct empirical chapters. The first of these chapters (chapter 4) features a series of large-N, cross-national statistical tests that evaluate the impact of political institutions, competitive diffusion and funded pension assets on the adoption and enforcement of insider trading laws and the extent of shareholder voting rights, My dissertation's remaining empirical chapters examine the role of pension funds in the policy making process in more detail and with more analytical clarity. The first of these chapters (chapter 5) is a statistical analysis of state employee retirement funds' impact on US-state-level anti-takeover legislation during the 1980s and early 1990s. The second of these chapters (chapter 6) is a qualitative, interview based case study exploring the role of Polish pension funds in a recent flurry of corporate governance and securities law reforms in that country. Like their American counterparts, these pension funds are extremely large. Relative to the size of the Polish stock market, the largest of them are 2- 3 times as large as the largest American pension funds. Unlike their American counterparts, however, Polish pension funds have been passive in corporate governance issues. I argue that the regulatory regime they face incentivizes these pension funds to be as passive as they have been.

Table of Contents

Table Of Contents

Chapter1 Introduction .......................................................................................................1

Towards A Political Explanation of Investor Protection....................................6

Argument And Contributions .......................................................................... 8

Plan of The Dissertation ................................................................................13

Chapter 2 Literature Review .............................................................. ............................16

Law and Finance Theory ................................................................................16

Interest Group Theories of Investor Protection ..............................................19

A Role For Labor? .........................................................................22

Lobby Formation ..........................................................................24

Putting The Pieces Together: Political Economy Models of Investor Protection .........................................................................................................................28

Public Interest Models of Investor Protection ................................................31

Summary .........................................................................................................34

Chapter 3 A Common Agency Model of Investor Protection ...........................................36

Formal Model Basics ......................................................................................37

Model ............................................................................................................41

Hypotheses ......................................................................................................46

Summary ........................................................................................................54

Chapter 4 Insider Trading Laws and Shareholder Voting Rights .....................................56

Shareholder Voting Rights ..............................................................................56

Sample ...........................................................................................66

Method ..........................................................................................68

Independent Variables ...................................................................69

Results ...........................................................................................76

Insider Trading Laws ......................................................................................85

Sample ...........................................................................................88

Method ...........................................................................................89

Independent Variables ...................................................................91

Insider Trading Law Adoption Results ..........................................95

Insider Trading Law Enforcement Results ..................................102

Summary .......................................................................................................107

Section II - A Closer Look at Pension Funds ................................................................109

Chapter 5 State Public Employee Retirement Systems and Anti-Takeover Laws ..........118

Corporate Ownership In The United States ..................................................121

Pension Funds, The Money Flood And The Four Stages of American Capitalism ...................................................................122

Firm Level Pension Fund Activism .............................................................132

Does Firm Level Shareholder Activism Work? ...........................135

Limitations On Public Fund Activism .........................................136

Pension Funds' Policy Implications .............................................................140

Anti-Takeover Laws ....................................................................140

The Politics of Anti-Takeover Laws ............................................143

Tests ..............................................................................................................147

Sample .........................................................................................148

Dependent Variables ....................................................................148

Method .........................................................................................148

Independent Variables .................................................................150

Results .......................................................................................150

Summary ......................................................................................................157

Chapter 6 An Application to Polish Pension Funds: Does Pension Reform lead to Corporate Governance Reform? .....................................................................................159

The Spread and Rationale of Pension Reform...............................................159

Strains on the System...................................................................159

Wave of Reform...........................................................................162

Benefits of Reform.......................................................................165

The Corporate Governance Channel............................................167

Pension Reform in Poland ............................................................................168

Security Through Diversity..........................................................171

Other Features of Polish Corporate Ownership............................175

OFE Pension Funds and Polish Corporate Governance................................177

Corporate Governance Hard Law In Poland ..............................177

Pension Fund Influence On Hard Law.........................................179

Corporate Governance Soft Law in Poland..................................180

Firm Level Pension Fund Activism...............................................................186

Why Isn't There A Larger Pension Fund Impact On Polish Corporate Governance?..................................................................................................192

Performance Incentives, Herd Behavior And Free Riding ..........193

Limits on Foreign Investment And Government Incentives To Retain Pension Fund Capital.......................................................201

Conclusion and Recommendations ...............................................................204

Chapter 7 Conclusion ......................................................................................................208

7.1 Outstanding Issues.................................................................................210

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