Gregory Burke, a PhD student in accounting at Duke University, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss his paper SEC Rule 14a-8 Shareholder Proposals: No-Action Requests, Determinants, and the Role of SEC Staff. In this paper, Burke examines shareholder proposals submitted by firms to the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance for no-action relief. He tests whether four determinants (legal characteristics, pressure, proposal attributes, and individual staff) are associated with higher probabilities of no-action relief being granted and finds that there are statistically significant associations for each.