Political Influence, Firm Performance and Survival

We examine how regional-level political influence affects firm financial performance and survival. Combining representative survey data on mid-sized manufacturing firms in Russia with official registry data, we find that politically influential firms exhibit higher profitability and retain larger financial investments than non-influential firms. Most importantly, our empirical analysis suggests that the benefits of influence may be transient. Influential firms experienced significantly lower growth during our sample period than non-influential firms. Moreover, influential firms had a significantly higher probability of being liquidated than non-influential firms and the likelihood of the subsequent plant utilization by a new firm was higher for the politically influential liquidated firms