We show that political geography has a pervasive effect on the cross-section of stock returns. We collect election results over a 40-year period and use a political alignment index (PAI) of each state's leading politicians with the ruling (presidential) party to proxy for local firms’...

We investigate whether diversity in points of view within corporate boards, as captured by the diversity in political ideology of board members, can affect a firm's performance. We employ personal political contributions' data to measure political ideology distance among groups of inside,...

We show that firm headquarters’ geographic proximity to political power centers (state capitals) is associated with higher abnormal returns. Consistent with the notion that this effect is rooted in social network links, we find it is more pronounced in communities with high levels of...

We assess whether observable corporate political strategies can serve as channels of value-relevant political information flow into stock prices and form the basis for profitable return predictability strategies. We document that returns of politically connected firms' stocks lead those of their...