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AbstractResearch Question/IssueThis study examines activism campaigns where multiple activists simultaneously target the same firm—which we term clustered shareholder activism. Despite the growing influence of shareholder activism on corporate governance, the clustered activism phenomenon has previously only been addressed indirectly, anecdotally, or with limited data. We consider cost sharing motives for clustered activism and whether the phenomenon exerts a positive or negative impact on the performance of the target firm.Research Findings/InsightsUsing a large dataset of shareholder activism events at U.S. firms, we find that clustered activism campaigns are more common at larger firms and among geographically proximate activists, which is consistent with our prediction that activists cluster to reduce the costs associated with activism campaigns. Furthermore, we find that clustered activism produces elevated profitability and abnormal returns, which is consistent with our prediction that activists cluster to address principal–agency costs.Theoretical/Academic ImplicationsOur study provides some of the first theoretical and empirical evidence on the clustered activism phenomenon. We contribute to the understanding of the role of shareholder activism by considering their effect on principal–agency and principal–principal problems. Our results also contribute to the literature that examines factors relating to the success of shareholder activism by documenting the effect of clustered activism on activism costs and target firm performance.Practitioner/Policy ImplicationsOur study adds to the debate among practitioners and regulators on the merits (or lack thereof) of clustered activism. Our findings suggest that a regulatory approach that encourages clustered activism can benefit shareholders.Video Abstracthttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/14678683/homepage/videoabstracts.htmlyoutubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=0_D-6Pw9sYo

We develop and validate a novel experimental design that builds a bridge between experimental research on the theory of spatial voting and the literature on measuring policy positions from text. Our design utilizes established text-scaling techniques and their corresponding coding schemes to communicate candidates' numerical policy positions via verbal policy statements. This design allows researchers to investigate the relationship between candidates' policy stances and voter choice in a purely text-based context. We validate our approach with an online survey experiment. Our results generalize previous findings in the literature and show that proximity considerations are empirically prevalent in purely text-based issue framing scenarios. The design we develop is broad and portable, and we discuss how it adds to current experimental designs, as well as suggest several implications and possible routes for future research.

AbstractSurvey experiments that investigate how voting procedures affect voting behavior and election outcomes use hypothetical questions and non-representative samples. We present here the results of a novel survey experiment that addresses both concerns. First, the winning party in our experiment receives a donation to its campaign funds inducing real consequences for voting. Second, we run an online experiment with a Dutch national representative sample (N = 1240). Our results validate previous findings using a representative sample, in particular that approval voting leads to a higher concentration in votes for smaller parties and strengthens centrist parties in comparison to plurality voting. Importantly, our results suggest that voting behavior is not affected by voting incentives and can be equally reliably elicited with hypothetical questions.