How Shareholders Argue: Three Decades of Proposal Narratives Solo-authored
Shareholder proposals are a key channel of shareholder voice, yet their legitimacy is under review at the SEC. To evaluate this channel, I build the first full-text corpus of shareholder proposals from DEF 14A filings (1994–2025) and SEC no-action letters (2008–2025). I use large language models to decompose each proposal’s argumentative structure into causal chains and document four stylized facts. First, narratives are substantively heterogeneous and predict both SEC no-action decisions and shareholder vote support out of sample. Second, proposal narratives differentiate between shareholder-oriented and stakeholder-oriented proponents, and board responses diverge along the same axis. Third, narratives shift substantially across decades—proponents increasingly target stakeholder-oriented problems and ground their arguments in external evidence, while boards more frequently deflect problems and dismiss remedies as redundant. Fourth, almost half of stakeholder-problem proposals are argued in shareholder-value terms, while shareholder-problem proposals are rarely argued in stakeholder-value terms. This asymmetry grows over time and is not an artifact of SEC screening. Exploiting cross-firm variation in media coverage of adverse ESG events, together with the June 2017 formation of the US Climate Alliance as a natural experiment, I provide evidence that this asymmetry responds to the internalization of externalities.
"The Geoeconomics of Imports: Evidence from the UN Security Council Elections" with Jing Wu
This paper examines how trade functions as U.S. geoeconomic statecraft and why certain firms follow the flag. Exploiting elections to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), we show that U.S. public firms increase imports from a country by 16 percent when it rotates onto the council. This increase is unique to the U.S. relative to comparable developed countries without permanent UNSC membership and is concentrated in products where elected countries lack comparative advantage, reflecting strategic reallocation of U.S. imports rather than improvements in exporter economies. Consistent with geopolitical motivations, the effect is concentrated among swing countries and is more pronounced when the elected country holds greater agenda-setting power. We identify two channels of import politicization: policy concessions and rent-seeking by firms. First, imports from newly elected countries face lower duty rates despite unchanged trade costs and prices, and federal procurement shifts toward their contractors and products. Second, the increase is disproportionately driven by firms whose top lobbying issues are overseen by senators who serve concurrently on the Foreign Relations Committee, with the effect increasing in senator seniority. These firms exhibit lower operational efficiency but higher subsequent valuations. Finally, countries with larger import increases during their UNSC terms exhibit greater voting alignment with the U.S.
"From Extra-budgetary to Budgetary: Public Debt Recognition and Private Sector Responses" with Stella Park and Heng Yue
We examine how recognizing government debt on official budgets affects private sector investment. Exploiting China's 2014 fiscal reform, which mandated local governments to transition from extra-budgetary to budgetary debt financing, we compare firms in cities with high versus low pre-reform implicit debt using a difference-indifferences design. Treated firms increase investment by 0.75 percentage points (about 13 percent of the mean) and leverage by 1.5 percentage points, with the effect concentrated in long-term loans. Employment increases by 9.3 percent. Cross-sectional tests indicate a monitoring channel: the effect is stronger for financially constrained firms and firms with lower accounting quality, and weaker for firms reliant on government support or exposed to local consumption. Our findings demonstrate that public debt recognition generates real effects by reallocating credit from the public to the private sector.
"LIFO and the Muted Response to Inflation Expectations" with Hanwen Xu and Heng Yue
Firms tend to increase inventory when they expect input prices to rise, buying ahead to lock in lower costs. We first provide evidence that the stockpiling channel, rather than a lower real cost of capital, is the primary driver of the positive relation between inventory and inflation expectations. We then find that the Last-In, First-Out (LIFO) inventory method significantly dampens this response, consistent with LIFO muting the short-term earnings benefit of buying ahead and potentially weakening managers' incentive to stockpile. This attenuation is stronger among firms with larger LIFO reserves, consistent with LIFO liquidation substituting for proactive stockpiling. Using Section 301 tariffs and physical import quantities from Bills of Lading, we provide corroborating evidence that these patterns reflect real behavioral differences rather than mechanical valuation effects.
"Monetary Policy and Trade Credit" with Weikai Li, Zhaogang Song and Jing Wu
Trade credit — roughly three times the size of bank loans — is a critical yet underexplored channel of monetary policy transmission. We study this channel using a novel dataset from Dun & Bradstreet's Global Trade Exchange, which provides monthly firm-level payment records disaggregated by payment timeliness. We find that contractionary monetary policy surprises significantly increase trade credit, driven predominantly by customers delaying payments beyond contractual terms, particularly in long-overdue accounts, and to a lesser extent by expanded within-term provisions. Cross-sectionally, trade credit responses are stronger among firms with higher growth options, tighter financial constraints, and better information environments, consistent with trade credit serving as substitute financing when bank credit tightens. We further show that the ex ante level and structure of trade credit explain cross-sectional variation in stock price reactions to monetary policy announcements. Our findings establish supply-chain credit as a significant margin of adjustment through which firms absorb monetary policy shocks.
"CECL and the Transmission of Monetary Policy" with Oliver Binz, Ally Lin and Matthew Phillips
"Data Centre Tax Incentives of ESG" with Gunchang Kim, Shaphan Ng and Rencheng Wang
"Value of Open Data: Evidence from China’s Land Transaction Market" Solo-authored