This is the first comprehensive study of the distribution of voting rights to shareholders. Only individuals owning stock on a record date may vote. Firms, however, reveal record dates after the fact 91% of the time. With controversial votes, firms are more likely to do the opposite, and this tendency is associated with a lower passage rate for shareholder-initiated proposals. The New York Stock Exchange sells nonpublic record-date information to select investors. When stocks go ex vote, prices decline and trading volume surges, suggesting that activist investors are buying marginal votes. These trends are most pronounced with controversial votes.

This paper investigates the effects of college tuition on student debt and human capital accumulation. We exploit data from a random sample of undergraduate students in the United States and implement a research design that instruments for realized tuition with relatively large changes to the advertised tuition of students who enrolled at the same school in different cohorts. We find that $5,000 in higher tuition causally reduces the probability of graduating with a graduate degree by 3.1 percentage points and increases student debt by $1,480. Higher tuition also leads to a decline in mortgage balances and an increase in credit card delinquencies.