Shareholder Democracy Under Autocracy: Voting Rights and Corporate Performance in Imperial Russia

43 Pages Posted: 9 Aug 2021 Last revised: 11 Aug 2021

See all articles by Amy Dayton

Amy Dayton

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Amanda G. Gregg

Middlebury College

Steven Nafziger

Williams College

Date Written: May 18, 2021

Abstract

This paper investigates how the rules that corporations wrote for themselves related to their financing and performance in an environment characterized by poor investor protections, Imperial Russia. We present new data on detailed governance provisions from Imperial Russian corporate charters, which we connect to a comprehensive panel database of corporate balance sheets from 1899to 1914. We document how variation in votes per share and other shareholder rights provisions were related to corporate choices of using debt vs. equity and whether these governance provisions correlated systematically with performance measures on the balance sheet and in terms of the market-to-book ratio. This investigation reveals the tradeoffs weighed by Imperial Russian corporations and demonstrates the surprising flexibility that Russian corporations enjoyed, conditional on obtaining a corporate charter.

Keywords: corporate governance, corporate finance, Imperial Russia, economic history

JEL Classification: G34, G32, N23, N63

Suggested Citation

Dayton, Amy and Gregg, Amanda G. and Nafziger, Steven, Shareholder Democracy Under Autocracy: Voting Rights and Corporate Performance in Imperial Russia (May 18, 2021). European Corporate Governance Institute – Finance Working Paper No. 773/2021, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3899224 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3899224

Amy Dayton

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Amanda G. Gregg (Contact Author)

Middlebury College ( email )

Middlebury, VT 05753
United States

Steven Nafziger

Williams College ( email )

Williamstown, MA 01267
United States

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