This paper studies Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) no-action-letter decisions that determine whether companies can exclude shareholder proposals from their proxy statements. During 2007–19, the market reacted positively when the SEC permitted exclusion, which suggests that investors viewed those proposals as value reducing on average. We also find that a company’s stock price decreased over time while waiting for an SEC decision, which suggests that challenged proposals imposed distraction costs on companies. The SEC’s decisions can be predicted by regulatory rules but are also related to a proposal’s predicted votes—more popular types of proposals were less likely to be removed. We find no robust evidence that no-action-letter decisions differed when the SEC was controlled by Democrats versus Republicans. Taken together, the evidence suggests that managers may be serving shareholder interests in opposing some proposals and that the no-action-letter process may be helping shareholders by weeding out value-reducing proposals.

中文翻译：

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股东提案会伤害股东吗？来自证券交易委员会无行动信决定的证据

本文研究了美国证券交易委员会 (SEC) 的无行动信决定，这些决定确定公司是否可以将股东提案从其代理声明中排除。在 2007-19 年期间，当 SEC 允许排除在外时，市场反应积极，这表明投资者平均将这些提议视为贬值。我们还发现，在等待美国证券交易委员会的决定期间，公司的股价会随着时间的推移而下跌，这表明受到质疑的提案会给公司带来分心成本。SEC 的决定可以通过监管规则进行预测，但也与提案的预测票数有关——更受欢迎的提案类型不太可能被删除。我们没有发现强有力的证据表明，当 SEC 由民主党控制时，不采取行动信的决定会有所不同。综合起来，