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The main purpose of this paper is to investigate whether Chinese investors can benefit from international diversification and where these benefits are to be found.

This paper applies an expanding optimization procedure, which is different from the econometric methods or Monte Carlo simulations adopted in many empirical investigations in the literature. The authors' analysis is based on various realized portfolios that are set up at different dates in the sample period.

Based on a stream of realized portfolios, the authors show that Chinese investors can gain substantially in terms of risk reduction as they venture into foreign markets, regardless of the region into which they choose to diversify and whether in‐sample or out‐of‐sample performance is evaluated. However, the optimal strategies under consideration cannot achieve higher out‐of‐sample expected returns and risk‐adjusted returns than does the domestic investment.

In contrast with those in the literature, the authors' analysis is based on the out‐of‐sample performance of a series of realized optimal portfolios. Their method can address time‐varying correlations that are ignored in most previous research. In addition, this method not only allows them to analyze sizes of diversification benefits but also enables them to examine the major characteristics of international portfolios to gauge the effectiveness of different diversification strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to study filer identities and voting outcomes of Canadian shareholder proposals and their impact on shareholders' wealth during the period from 2001 to 2008.

In total, 762 Canadian shareholder proposals and related information on targeted firms were collected from the Shareholder Association for Research and Education (SHARE) and the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) databases. Statistical analyses are carried out on the features of shareholder proposals. Regression analyses are performed on voting outcomes, and an event study is conducted to test the impact of shareholder proposals on stock prices.

The authors' analyses show that proposals submitted by institutions or coordinated shareholder groups receive stronger support than those submitted by individuals and religious groups. Targeted firms are more willing and more likely to reach agreements with institutional investors, which in turn prompts activists to withdraw their proposals. The voting behavior of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP) has a significant impact on voting outcomes. The targeted firms' stock prices respond substantially to news on proposals submitted by institutional and coordinated investors and proposals on social and environmental issues.

In addition to in‐depth analyses (issues, filers, voting outcomes, and impacts on stock price) of Canadian shareholder proposals, this paper explores the voting behaviour and impact of a large institutional shareholder that has been passive in filing shareholder proposals. Special attention is paid to Canadian features of shareholder activism, and differences between Canadian and US shareholder proposals are highlighted and discussed. The paper thus extends shareholder activism studies from focusing on open shareholder activists to investigating passive institutional shareholders.