Finance Theses and Dissertations

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Browsing Finance Theses and Dissertations by Author "Del Guercio, Diane"

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    Are Good Deeds Rewarded? Director Awards and the Market for Directorships
    (University of Oregon, 2015-08-18) Tran, Hai; Del Guercio, Diane
    Prior studies document that board directors who fail to act as effective monitors of management are penalized by the labor market in the form of fewer subsequent board seats. However, there is little evidence on how the market rewards directors for exceptional advising and monitoring on corporate boards. In this paper, I use national director awards as a positive shock to directors’ reputations and examine changes in board seats for award-winning directors. Award-winning directors gain more board seats than non-winning directors, both after and before the awards. Event study tests suggest that the quality of award-winning directors may have been revealed to the labor market before the awards but not to the broader stock market. Stock market reactions to appointments of award-winning directors are positive and statistically significant only after the awards, not before.
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    ItemOpen Access
    Company Stock in Defined Contribution Plans: Evidence from Proxy Voting
    (University of Oregon, 2014-09-29) Park, Heejin; Del Guercio, Diane
    This study examines whether firms' decisions to offer company stock in defined contribution (DC) plans are explained by managers' corporate control motives. Using a large sample of proxy voting outcomes, I find that employee ownership in DC plans is significantly and positively associated with the level of voting support for management sponsored proposals. This suggests that managers encourage employee DC holdings in company stock in order to receive higher voting support in favor of management. The effects of employee ownership on voting outcomes are significantly greater in subsample tests than in full sample tests: management proposals opposed by Institutional Shareholder Services, management proposals of close votes, director election votes receiving more than 20% of votes withheld, and say-on-pay frequency proposals.