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Characteristics of Companies Targeted by Social Proxies: An Empirical Analysis in the Context of the U nited S tates
Author(s) -
Rojas Miguel,
M'Zali Bouchra,
Turcotte MarieFrance,
Merrigan Philip
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
business and society review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.524
H-Index - 21
eISSN - 1467-8594
pISSN - 0045-3609
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8594.2012.00416.x
Subject(s) - matching (statistics) , context (archaeology) , shareholder , insider , business , set (abstract data type) , monetary economics , propensity score matching , economics , corporate governance , finance , statistics , paleontology , mathematics , political science , computer science , law , biology , programming language
We compare the traits of companies receiving social policy shareholder resolutions with those of a set of matching firms. We show that targeted firms tend to be much larger and riskier, less profitable and less socially performing than their counterparts. The five largest investors in firms receiving social proxies tend to hold a lower stake in those firms vis‐à‐vis the matching firms. Firms in both samples, however, are not statistically different in terms of percentages of shares held by institutional and insider investors. We provide possible explanations for our results.