Shareholder Empowerment: Three Institutional Innovations to Awaken the Sleeping Giant (New Studies on Political Economy)

How can shareholders play a more active role in the corporation? Which institutional arrangements can awaken this sleeping giant and channel its power in a beneficial direction? This dissertation explores three delegation arrangements which are of particular interest from a shareholder empowerment perspective: the board of directors, pension funds, and corporate vote buying. The book argues that - in order to be truly effective - the delegation of monitoring and voting power should generally be made subject to a competitive process. Two of the three arrangements - competitive director elections and the free choice of pension funds - hold promise of leading to an actual empowerment of shareholders, while the third arrangement - corporate vote buying - appears to disempower rather than empower them. Dissertation.