Explore the vast range of titles available.

We survey institutional investors to better understand their role in the corporate governance of firms. Consistent with a number of theories, we document widespread behind-the-scenes intervention as well as governance-motivated exit. These governance mechanisms are viewed as complementary devices, with intervention typically occurring prior to a potential exit. We further find that long-term investors and investors that are less concerned about stock liquidity intervene more intensively. Finally, we find that most investors use proxy advisors and believe that the information provided by such advisors improves their own voting decisions.

Surface temperature reconstructions of the past 1500 years suggest that recent warming is unprecedented in that time. Here we provide a broader perspective by reconstructing regional and global temperature anomalies for the past 11,300 years from 73 globally distributed records. Early Holocene (10,000 to 5000 years ago) warmth is followed by ∼0.7°C cooling through the middle to late Holocene (<5000 years ago), culminating in the coolest temperatures of the Holocene during the Little Ice Age, about 200 years ago. This cooling is largely associated with ∼2°C change in the North Atlantic. Current global temperatures of the past decade have not yet exceeded peak interglacial values but are warmer than during ∼75% of the Holocene temperature history. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change model projections for 2100 exceed the full distribution of Holocene temperature under all plausible greenhouse gas emission scenarios.

Global temperatures are known to have varied over the past 1500 years, but the spatial patterns have remained poorly defined. We used a global climate proxy network to reconstruct surface temperature patterns over this interval. The Medieval period is found to display warmth that matches or exceeds that of the past decade in some regions, but which falls well below recent levels globally. This period is marked by a tendency for La Niña-like conditions in the tropical Pacific. The coldest temperatures of the Little Ice Age are observed over the interval 1400 to 1700 C.E., with greatest cooling over the extratropical Northern Hemisphere continents. The patterns of temperature change imply dynamical responses of climate to natural radiative forcing changes involving El Niño and the North Atlantic Oscillation-Arctic Oscillation.

Lightning plays an important role in atmospheric chemistry and in the initiation of wildfires, but the impact of global warming on lightning rates is poorly constrained. Here we propose that the lightning flash rate is proportional to the convective available potential energy (CAPE) times the precipitation rate. Using observations, the product of CAPE and precipitation explains 77% of the variance in the time series of total cloud-to-ground lightning flashes over the contiguous United States (CONUS). Storms convert CAPE times precipitated water mass to discharged lightning energy with an efficiency of 1%. When this proxy is applied to 11 climate models, CONUS lightning strikes are predicted to increase 12 ± 5% per degree Celsius of global warming and about 50% over this century.

A pervasive issue in social and environmental research has been how to improve the quality of socioeconomic data in developing countries. Given the shortcomings of standard sources, the present study examines luminosity (measures of nighttime lights visible from space) as a proxy for standard measures of output (gross domestic product). We compare output and luminosity at the country level and at the 1° latitude x 1° longitude grid-cell level for the period 1992-2008. We find that luminosity has informational value for countries with low-quality statistical systems, particularly for those countries with no recent population or economic censuses.

The timing and abruptness of the initiation and termination of the Early Holocene African Humid Period are subjects of ongoing debate, with direct consequences for our understanding of abrupt climate change, paleoenvironments, and early human cultural development. Here, we provide proxy evidence from the Horn of Africa region that documents abrupt transitions into and out of the African Humid Period in northeast Africa. Similar and generally synchronous abrupt transitions at other East African sites suggest that rapid shifts in hydroclimate are a regionally coherent feature. Our analysis suggests that the termination of the African Humid Period in the Horn of Africa occurred within centuries, underscoring the nonlinearity of the region's hydroclimate.

This paper highlights several areas where graphical techniques can be harnessed to address the problem of measurement errors in causal inference. In particular, it discusses the control of unmeasured confounders in parametric and nonparametric models and the computational problem of obtaining bias-free effect estimates in such models. We derive new conditions under which causal effects can be restored by observing proxy variables of unmeasured confounders with/without external studies.

Proxy advisory firms have become important players in corporate governance, but the extent of their influence over shareholder votes is debated. We estimate the effect of Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) recommendations on voting outcomes by exploiting exogenous variation in ISS recommendations generated by a cutoff rule in ISS voting guidelines. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that from 2010 to 2011, a negative ISS recommendation on a say-on-pay proposal leads to a 25 percentage point reduction in say-on-pay voting support, suggesting a strong influence over shareholder votes. We also use our setting to examine the informational role of ISS recommendations.

In the literature, there is no consensus on a common approach to measure bond liquidity. This paper is the first to comprehensively compare all commonly employed liquidity measures based on intraday and daily data for the U.S. corporate bond market. We find that high-frequency measures based on intraday data are very strongly correlated, implying that previous results should be robust regarding the chosen measure. Most low-frequency proxies based on daily data generally also measure transaction costs well. However, three proxies clearly take the lead: Corwin and Schultz's (2012) high-low spread estimator, Roll's (1984) measure, and Hasbrouck's (2009) Gibbs measure.

The importance of the Non-Akrasia Constraint is brought out by recent literature on \"higher-order evidence\"--evidence about what evidence one has, or what one's evidence supports. Much of this debate has focused on the question of what to believe when one becomes rationally highly confident that P on the basis of some evidence, E, and then receives further (misleading) evidence to the effect that E does not support P. Although there is disagreement as to whether this new evidence should cause one to reduce confidence in P, the major positions that have been defended thus far in the higher-order evidence debate agree that ideally rational agents should respect the Non-Akrasia Constraint.