Voting on public goods: Citizens vs shareholders

Dec 14, 2025

Robin Döttling , Doron Levit , Nadya Malenko , Magdalena Rola-Janicka

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We study the interplay between a "one person-one vote" political system and a "one share-one vote" corporate governance regime. If shareholders push firms for more pro-social policies, political backlash may arise, undoing ESG initiatives. If public policy is frictionless, shareholder democracy becomes irrelevant: the political system fully offsets shareholder influence. With public policy frictions, pro-social corporations can mitigate regulatory shortcomings and enhance corporate public goods provision. Nevertheless, shareholder democracy can hurt citizens due to the representation problem: it favors the preferences of the wealthy. Investor diversification, pass-through voting, and corporate greenwashing have important implications for these trade-offs of shareholder democracy.

Robin Döttling

Robin Döttling

Doron Levit

Doron Levit

Nadya Malenko

Nadya Malenko

Boston College

Magdalena Rola-Janicka

Magdalena Rola-Janicka