We use novel hand-collected data on political connections to find politically connected firms earn more positive (less negative) Cumulative Abnormal Returns (CARs) than those without political connections as a response to favorable (unfavorable) macroeconomic news. Using the...

We quantify the private returns and social costs of political connections exploiting a unique longitudinal dataset that combines matched employer-employee data for a representative sample of Italian firms with administrative archives on the universe of individuals appointed in local governments...

This paper examines how party dominance affects elected politicians’ quality, measured by their career path. Politicians’ career is divided between political and technical or administrative posts. To examine the relationship between party dominance and career path, I use data from the...

We examine the role of political connections in US state government-awarded corporate economic incentives, and whether a role (if present) is cause for constituent concern. We find that companies are more likely to receive an incentive award in a politically connected state and this association...

Extant literature suggests that audit firms establish political connections at the national level to lobby regulators and legislators. In this paper we construct a novel dataset of Big 4 auditors’ political connections at the audit office level and examine the implications of auditors’...

In politically connected firms (PCs), employment-related offenses and workplace safety standards violations run more rampant than non-PCs. Perceived ability to avoid large-scale penalties, leveraging political connections, enables PCs to perpetuate such egregious employee treatment. Plausibly...

This paper investigates whether political connections affect individuals' propensity to engage in illegal activities in financial markets. We use the 2007 French presidential election as marker of change in the value of political connections, in a difference-in-differences research design. We...

We examine whether economic and military competence of political leaders affect their duration in office. We introduce leader heterogeneity in the selectorate theory of Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) and derive the hypothesis that in the presence of a revolutionary threat, economic competence...

Adequate wages are an important tool to shield public officials from special interests and corruption. But what is the equilibrium effect of higher wages in the presence of criminal pressure groups, who use both bribes and violence? By means of a regression discontinuity design, we show that an...