Bolton et al (2018)

Bolton, Patrick, Tao Li, Enrichetta Ravina, and Howard Rosenthal. “Investor Ideology.” Working paper (Columbia University), 2018.

From the authors’ abstract: “We estimate institutional investor preferences based on their proxy voting records in publicly listed Russell 3000 firms. We employ a spatial model of proxy voting, the W-NOMINATE method for scaling legislatures, and map institutional investors onto a left-right dimension based on their votes for fiscal year 2012. The far-left are socially responsible and the far-right are “money- conscious” investors. Significant ideological differences reflect an absence of shareholder unanimity… Public pension funds and other investors on the left support a more social and environment-friendly orientation of the firm and fewer executive compensation proposals. A second dimension reflects a more traditional governance view, with management disciplinarian investors…pitted against more management friendly ones.”

Link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3119935