Shareholderism Around the World: Corporate Purpose, Culture, and Law

The authors are particularly grateful for helpful comments from Ruth Aguilera, Ofer Eldar, Yaniv Grinstein, Angie Low, Annette Poulsen, Kenichi Ueda and Kristin van Zweiten. The authors are also grateful for comments they received at Wake Forest University, Boca-ECGI Conference, Boston University, CEIBS, European Financial Management Association Conference, Henley Business School, Stellenbosch University, University of Luxembourg, Spanish Law and Economics Association Meeting, the Swedish House of Finance, the University of Ottawa, the National Bank of Belgium, the PRI Academie Series, EIEF, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Temple University, Yeshiva University, Duke University, the Nijmegen School of Management, the University of Warwick, Sabançi University, Pompeu Fabra University, the ECGI/SSE Corporate Governance Due Diligence Workshop, the Joint Finance Seminar, the Global Corporate Governance Colloquium, Dolomites Winter Finance Conference, UBC Summer Finance Conference, the LSE Law and Finance Research Seminar Series, 15th International Conference on Financial Systems Engineering and Risk Management, the Ackerman Corporate Governance Conference at Bar Ilan University, the National University of Singapore’s Finance Conference, the American Law and Economics Annual Meeting, and Oxford conference on Negative Externalities of Corporate Behaviour. The authors are grateful for the help they received from several research assistants, yet are particularly indebted to the indefatigable Uri Harel, Omri Ariav, Mati Goldberg, and Dor Marinovsky. Thanks also to Talia Ochayon and Maayan Nagar. The authors are grateful to Jesse Fried for his support in carrying out the survey. The previous title of this paper was “Shareholders and Stakeholders: The Role of Values, Culture, and Law in Directors’ Decisions”.