The contractual theory of the firm predicts that companies adopt charters that maximize firms’ value regardless of the default rule. We test this proposition around an exogenous switch of the default from a one-share-one-vote regime to tenure voting following a legal reform in France. In initial public offerings (IPOs), tenure voting is primarily adopted by families, and after the reform its use increased slightly but not significantly. The change in default rule has no significant impact on companies’ characteristics or valuations. For companies that were already listed with one-share-one-vote systems and would have been forced to switch to tenure voting by default, we observe a revealed preference for the choice they had made at the IPO; one-share-one-vote companies preserve their prereform status, unless the French state has a blocking minority. Overall, the results suggest that once firms have optimized, changing the default rule imposes transaction costs without changing outcomes.

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终身投票的忠诚度股票：默认规则重要吗？来自 Loi Florange 实验的证据

公司的合同理论预测，公司采用使公司价值最大化的章程，而不管违约规则如何。在法国进行法律改革后，我们围绕违约从一股一票制到任期投票的外生转换来测试这一命题。在首次公开募股（IPO）中，任期投票主要由家族采用，改革后其使用略有增加，但没有显着增加。违约规则的变化对公司的特征或估值没有重大影响。对于已经以一股一票制上市并在默认情况下被迫改用任期投票的公司，我们观察到他们在首次公开募股时做出的选择表现出明显的偏好；一股一票制的公司保留其改革前的地位，除非法国政府有少数人阻止。