The Journal of Finance

The Journal of Finance publishes leading research across all the major fields of finance. It is one of the most widely cited journals in academic finance, and in all of economics. Each of the six issues per year reaches over 8,000 academics, finance professionals, libraries, and government and financial institutions around the world. The journal is the official publication of The American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics.

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Search results: 3.

The Wall Street Walk when Blockholders Compete for Flows

Published: 08/06/2015   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12308

AMIL DASGUPTA, GIORGIA PIACENTINO

Effective monitoring by equity blockholders is important for good corporate governance. A prominent theoretical literature argues that the threat of block sale (“exit”) can be an effective governance mechanism. Many blockholders are money managers. We show that, when money managers compete for investor capital, the threat of exit loses credibility, weakening its governance role. Money managers with more skin in the game will govern more successfully using exit. Allowing funds to engage in activist measures (“voice”) does not alter our qualitative results. Our results link widely prevalent incentives in the ever‐expanding money management industry to the nature of corporate governance.


Institutional Trade Persistence and Long‐Term Equity Returns

Published: 03/21/2011   |   DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2010.01644.x

AMIL DASGUPTA, ANDREA PRAT, MICHELA VERARDO

Recent studies show that single‐quarter institutional herding positively predicts short‐term returns. Motivated by the theoretical herding literature, which emphasizes endogenous persistence in decisions over time, we estimate the effect of multiquarter institutional buying and selling on stock returns. Using both regression and portfolio tests, we find that persistent institutional trading negatively predicts long‐term returns: persistently sold stocks outperform persistently bought stocks at long horizons. The negative association between returns and institutional trade persistence is not subsumed by past returns or other stock characteristics, is concentrated among smaller stocks, and is stronger for stocks with higher institutional ownership.


Ties That Bind: How Business Connections Affect Mutual Fund Activism

Published: 05/23/2016   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12425

DRAGANA CVIJANOVIĆ, AMIL DASGUPTA, KONSTANTINOS E. ZACHARIADIS

We investigate whether business ties with portfolio firms influence mutual funds' proxy voting using a comprehensive data set spanning 2003 to 2011. In contrast to prior literature, we find that business ties significantly influence promanagement voting at the level of individual pairs of fund families and firms after controlling for Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) recommendations and holdings. The association is significant only for shareholder‐sponsored proposals and stronger for those that pass or fail by relatively narrow margins. Our findings are consistent with a demand‐driven model of biased voting in which company managers use existing business ties with funds to influence how they vote.