Download or read book Voluntary Disclosure of Corporate Political Spending written by Lisa Goh and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 61 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this paper, we study voluntary political spending disclosure, a widespread yet relatively unexplored corporate voluntary disclosure practice. Using an index created by the CPA-Zicklin Center that measures the level of voluntary political spending disclosure for S&P 500 firms, we examine firm-level characteristics associated with such disclosures, and their importance. We find that firms with greater political expenditures, direct political connections, higher investor activism, better corporate social responsibility performance and governance, and more industry competition tend to have a higher level of political spending disclosure. We also find that a higher level of political spending disclosure is positively associated with both the number of institutional investors and the proportion of shares owned by institutional investors, particularly socially responsible institutional investors, after controlling for the quality of other disclosures. The level of political spending disclosure is also associated with a higher analyst following, lower forecast error, and smaller forecast dispersion. Finally, we find that political spending disclosure enhances the positive relationship between annual corporate political spending and firm financial performance. Together, these results are consistent with the view that voluntary political spending disclosure helps align managers' interests with those of shareholders.
Download or read book Corporate Political Spending Information Disclosure Regime written by Wei Feng (Ph. D) and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis seeks a better understanding of corporate participation in political processes and its role as well as potential in promoting corporate performance and reshaping political environment from the perspective of potential legislative interference – disclosure-based regulation on corporate political spending that requires this topic-specific information. Through theoretical and empirical explorations across disciplines, this thesis aims at forming a systematic anatomy of corporate political spending, bringing together facts and further rationales in an orderly arrangement. These results are intended to provide legislatures with more grounds for regulating corporate political participation. At the same time, the thesis is intended to raise awareness of deficiencies in corporate governance guidelines on political participation and expenditures. Accordingly, these findings shed light on objectives and corresponding instruments of future disclosure-based policy through a focus on corporate political spending and the formulation of guidelines for corporate governance of political participation and disclosure. To achieve these objectives, the thesis begins by illustrating the upsurge of corporate political spending and the regulatory gaps in both public policy and corporate governance level. In addition, questions on the basis of this information concerning corporate political spending are addressed to provide the fundamental background. Based on the initial expository investigation, this thesis further investigates current practices of public policies on corporate public participations and disclosure, as well as existing corporate governance managerial guidelines on political spending and voluntary disclosure. Deepening the examination of rationales for corporate political participation and voluntary disclosure of this information, a theoretical analysis has been conducted to further unveil the mechanism of corporate political behaviour. It is followed by an empirical examination of responses from participants of entity markets to information on the possible passage of mandatory regulation on corporate political spending, as well as information regarding the political connection itself, on individual country cases. The thesis, therefore, contributes substantively to policy debate on the introduction of transparency into corporate political expenditures, a debate which will help shape future policymaking about the interaction between private and public sectors. The outcome of this research will, among other studies, add theoretical and empirical support for rulemaking decisions on corporate political participation.
Download or read book Shining Light on Corporate Political Spending written by Lucian A. Bebchuk and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is currently considering a rulemaking petition requesting that the SEC develop rules requiring that public companies disclose their spending on politics. The petition, which was submitted by a committee of ten corporate law professors that we co-chaired, has received unprecedented support, including comment letters from nearly half a million individuals. At the same time, the petition has also attracted opponents, including prominent members of Congress and business organizations. This Article puts forward a comprehensive, empirically grounded case for the rulemaking advocated in the petition. We present empirical evidence indicating that a substantial amount of corporate spending on politics occurs under investors' radar screens, and that shareholders have significant interest in receiving information about such spending. We argue that disclosure of corporate political spending is necessary to ensure that such spending is consistent with shareholder interests. We discuss the emergence of voluntary disclosure practices in this area and show why voluntary disclosure is not a substitute for SEC rules. We also provide a framework for the SEC's design of these rules. Finally, we consider and respond to ten objections that have been raised to disclosure rules of this kind. We show that all of the considered objections, both individually and collectively, provide no basis for opposing rules that would require public companies to disclose their spending on politics. We conclude that the case for such rules is strong. The SEC should develop rules requiring public companies to disclose their political spending.
Download or read book Shareholder Activism and Voluntary Disclosure Initiation written by Vishal P. Baloria and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demand for disclosures on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues has increased dramatically. Using corporate political spending disclosures as our setting, we conduct a detailed inquiry of 541 political spending-related shareholder proposals from 2004 to 2012 to highlight the role of shareholder activism as a mechanism to bring about changes in ESG disclosure practices. Unlike earlier studies, we examine both proposals that went to a vote and proposals that were withdrawn by the activist, allowing us to more comprehensively assess the success of shareholder activism. We find that 20% of firms targeted by disclosure proposals begin disclosing in the subsequent year, although implementation rates vary by proposal type - 8% for proposals subject to a vote versus 56% for proposals withdrawn. Sponsor type is also important: unions and public pension funds are less likely than other activists to target firms with agency problems, are less successful in having proposals withdrawn, and the implementations they do obtain are viewed more negatively by the broader investor base. Our findings highlight shareholder proposals as one mechanism by which investors can express their preferences for and successfully influence corporate disclosure policies. Given activists' long-standing interest in environmental and social disclosure policies, we believe our findings generalize to a broader set of ESG disclosures.
Download or read book Super PACs written by Louise I. Gerdes and published by Greenhaven Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The passage of Citizens United by the Supreme Court in 2010 sparked a renewed debate about campaign spending by large political action committees, or Super PACs. Its ruling said that it is okay for corporations and labor unions to spend as much as they want in advertising and other methods to convince people to vote for or against a candidate. This book provides a wide range of opinions on the issue. Includes primary and secondary sources from a variety of perspectives; eyewitnesses, scientific journals, government officials, and many others.
Download or read book How Leading U S Corporations Govern and Spend on State Lobbying written by Heidi Welsh and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This project looks at how corporations oversee and govern money spent on corporate lobbying at the state level. It establishes a baseline for that spending by a representative sampling of the biggest U.S. publicly-listed corporations. Alongside intense public and investor attention about corporate involvement in elections, institutional investors and others have increasingly called for more transparency about corporate lobbying expenditures designed to influence legislation and regulation. Since 2014, more than half the shareholder proposals at public companies which concern political activity have included requests for actions related to lobbying. Indeed, more than 40 percent of the shareholder proposals about corporate political activity disclosure have focused specifically on lobbying, rather than campaign contributions. While considerable information is available about federal political spending, including lobbying, data are not available for all the states. Even where disclosure requirements do exist they are mixed in their comprehensiveness and utility. Disclosure requirements are missing entirely in 22 states. This report explores what is known now, under current reporting rules, so that investors and the public can contemplate whether reforms are needed and if a more precise voluntary corporate lobbying disclosure code makes sense. Key findings are that while companies are increasing their board oversight of state lobbying, they voluntarily disclose almost none of their state lobbying spending.
Download or read book Federal Election Campaign Laws written by United States and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Social Media and Voluntary Nonfinancial Disclosure written by Lijun (Gillian) Lei and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 63 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study uses a sample of 1,316 firm-year observations of S&P 500 companies (2012-2016) to investigate whether and how social media (i.e., Twitter) affects firms' voluntary nonfinancial disclosure (i.e., corporate political disclosure). Our results show that Twitter-adopting firms are generally more transparent in their disclosure of corporate political contributions and of related policies and board oversight. Moreover, firms with more Twitter followers and firms whose corporate political activities are targeted in more Twitter messages are more transparent in such disclosures. Our cross-sectional analysis suggests that this effect is stronger for firms whose stakeholders are more active on Twitter and firms that are less visible or more reputable. Our results remain robust to different econometric model specifications that address the endogeneity issue, including Heckman two-stage procedure, a difference-in-difference analysis, and controlling for preceding year's corporate political disclosure transparency. Our results remain qualitatively the same when we control for alternative social media platforms (i.e., Facebook) and non-interactive social media platforms (i.e., blogs and Really Simple Syndication feeds). Taken together, our findings suggest that social media (i.e., Twitter) presence exerts pressure on firms' voluntary nonfinancial disclosure practices (i.e., corporate political disclosure).
Download or read book Corporate Governance Strengthening Latin American Corporate Governance The Role of Institutional Investors written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report reflects long-term, in-depth discussion and debate by participants in the Latin American Roundtable on Corporate Governance.
Download or read book Corporate Political Spending written by Wesley D. Bizzell and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For corporations that choose to become involved in the political process, there should be a foundation of core principles, policies, and processes to help ensure a good governance structure for their decisions and to manage the risks that may arise from these activities. This report complements the Handbook on Corporate Political Activity and is intended to help corporations deepen their understanding of issues related to their involvement in the political process and to offer a variety of approaches for political spending, disclosure, and transparency. Its goal is to inform, not instruct, and to highlight viable options, not to advocate a specific agenda.
Download or read book Affluence and Influence written by Martin Gilens and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-22 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why policymaking in the United States privileges the rich over the poor Can a country be a democracy if its government only responds to the preferences of the rich? In an ideal democracy, all citizens should have equal influence on government policy—but as this book demonstrates, America's policymakers respond almost exclusively to the preferences of the economically advantaged. Affluence and Influence definitively explores how political inequality in the United States has evolved over the last several decades and how this growing disparity has been shaped by interest groups, parties, and elections. With sharp analysis and an impressive range of data, Martin Gilens looks at thousands of proposed policy changes, and the degree of support for each among poor, middle-class, and affluent Americans. His findings are staggering: when preferences of low- or middle-income Americans diverge from those of the affluent, there is virtually no relationship between policy outcomes and the desires of less advantaged groups. In contrast, affluent Americans' preferences exhibit a substantial relationship with policy outcomes whether their preferences are shared by lower-income groups or not. Gilens shows that representational inequality is spread widely across different policy domains and time periods. Yet Gilens also shows that under specific circumstances the preferences of the middle class and, to a lesser extent, the poor, do seem to matter. In particular, impending elections—especially presidential elections—and an even partisan division in Congress mitigate representational inequality and boost responsiveness to the preferences of the broader public. At a time when economic and political inequality in the United States only continues to rise, Affluence and Influence raises important questions about whether American democracy is truly responding to the needs of all its citizens.
Download or read book Committee Treasurers written by and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Risk Management and Corporate Governance written by Abol Jalilvand and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The asymmetry of responsibilities between management and corporate governance both for day-to-day operations and the board's monthly or quarterly review and evaluation remains an unresolved challenge. Expertise in the area of risk management is a fundamental requirement for effective corporate governance, if not by all, certainly by some board members. This means that along with board committees such as "compensation", "audit", "strategy" and several others, "risk management" committees must be established to monitor the likelihood of certain events that may cause the collapse of the firm. Risk Management and Corporate Governance allows academics and practitioners to assess the state of international research in risk management and corporate governance. The chapters overlay the areas of risk management and corporate governance on both financial and operating decisions of a firm while treating legal and political environments as externalities to decisions undertaken.
Download or read book Public Funding of Presidential Elections written by United States. Federal Election Commission and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Model Rules of Professional Conduct written by American Bar Association. House of Delegates and published by American Bar Association. This book was released on 2007 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.
Download or read book Financing Political Parties and Election Campaigns written by Ingrid van Biezen and published by Council of Europe. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On cover & title page: Integrated project "Making democratic institutions work"
Download or read book Report of the Securities and Exchange Commission on Questionable and Illegal Corporate Payments and Practices written by United States. Securities and Exchange Commission and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Printed for the use of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.
