This Brief studies patterns of political engagement among private firms in the European Union (EU). Using representative data, allowing for analysis at the level of NUTS2 regional groupings (EU regions varying from about 800,000 to 3 million inhabitants), various patterns of engagement emerge....

We study how connections to German federal parliamentarians affect firm dynamics by constructing a novel dataset linking politicians and election candidates to the universe of firms. To identify the causal effect of access to political power, we exploit (i) new appointments to the company...

We link a new database of politically exposed persons with the complete register of firms established in Mozambique since Independence. Focusing on the network of connections between firm owners, we use a generalized event study analysis to show that holders of political office achieve...

The ability of private interests to influence the political process is an important topic in economics and political science. While some of these efforts appear as campaign finance and lobbying expenditures in the official record, private interests may also engage in "covert" influence through...

The Society for the Advancement of AOPs Knowledgebase Interest Group (SKIG) is a vibrant assembly of more than 40 international experts focused on advancing the Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOP) framework. SKIG operates through regular online meetings, where two or three presentations per...

We study the reaction of low vs. high-skilled politicians to a reform, approved in Italy in 2011, that introduces stringent individual financial and career sanctions to local administrators who are judged responsible for their municipality’s bankruptcy. To this aim, we leverage exogenous...

We study how connections to German federal parliamentarians affect firm dynamics by constructing a novel dataset linking politicians and election candidates to the universe of firms. To identify the causal effect of access to political power, we exploit (i) new appointments to the company...

Businesspeople are expected to invest in political connections when the institutions are weak. Using an original dataset from Russia in 2003-2010, we document changes in political connections of the richest businesspeople and show that within the institutional environment of a fledgling...

Policy specialization in the U.S. Congress benefits the institution collectively and members individually. Yet members of Congress (MCs) are insufficiently specialized to optimize lawmaking success (Volden and Wiseman 2020). In this paper, we demonstrate the increasing propensity of MCs to...

Business actors play increasingly important roles in global governance and international regulation. This paper considers how regime complexity influences the roles of businesses and impacts opportunities for business influence on international regulatory regimes. We conducted a scoping...

Recent controversies over "woke" businesses have challenged traditional partisan political alignments, leading to increased criticism on the right of corporate political activity. This paper explores how the public evaluates corporate political activity, focusing specifically on whether...

Scholars have called for additional research into the antecedents to corporate political activity (CPA), including why firms may engage in specific kinds of CPA. In response, in what we believe to be a first-of-itskind study, we rely on upper echelons theory to explore the relationship between...

Fatal school shootings often spark support for stricter gun laws, threatening the gun lobby’s influence and agenda. To prevent political fallout, do pro-gun Political Action Committees increase contributions after fatal school shootings? Leveraging a novel dataset of pro-gun PAC contributions...

Many democracies allow their legislators to engage in private employment, but the consequences for parliamentary priorities are still poorly understood. We collect large-scale longitudinal data on outside employment and biographic characteristics for all members of the 18th German Bundestag, and...

We document an overrepresentation of politicians on corporate boards using data for Swiss federal legislators in 1931-2015. However, a close-election regression discontinuity design shows that electoral success explains at most a small part of this overrepresentation. We find small and mostly...

Using archival material from states, international organizations, and business actors, this paper explores how the Association for the Promotion and Protection of Private Foreign Investments (APPI), a transnational business interest association (BIA), liaised with different international...

Research on platform power indicates a preference alignment between consumers and platforms against regulation. However, recent scandals have changed public opinion toward platforms and undermined their structural coalition with consumers. I argue that amid the techlash, platforms need to...

Corporate political activity (CPA) scholarship has long held the notion that firms can improve their performance by combining CPA and market activities, the so-called nonmarket integrated strategy model (NISM). Yet, the relationships embedded in the NISM have not been subjected to thorough...

Economic and social situations where groups have to compete are ubiquitous. Such group contests create both a coordination problem within and between groups. Introducing leaders may help to mitigate these coordination problems. However, little is known about the effect of leadership in group...

Economic and social situations where groups have to compete are ubiquitous. Such group contests create both a coordination problem within and between groups. Introducing leaders may help to mitigate these coordination problems. However, little is known about the effect of leadership in group...

We study how connections to German federal parliamentarians affect firm dynamics by constructing a novel dataset linking politicians and election candidates to the universe of firms. To identify the causal effect of access to political power, we exploit (i) new appointments to the company...

Revolving door laws restrict public officials from representing private interests before government after leaving office. While these laws mitigate potential conflicts of interest, they also may affect the pool of candidates for public positions by lowering the financial benefits of holding...

How do firms respond to greener household preferences? We construct a novel index of environmental willingness to act on the state-quarter level based on Google Trends search data. Relating the index to firm-level information on the U.S. auto- motive sector from 2006 to 2019, we find ambiguous...

How do firms respond to greener household preferences? We construct a novel index of environmental willingness to act on the state-quarter level based on Google Trends search data. Relating the index to firm-level information on the U.S. automotive sector from 2006 to 2019, we find ambiguous...

On 1 March 2018, President Trump declared a 25% tariff on certain steel imports by invoking Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act. The tariff pitted two of America's most storied and interconnected industries, steel and auto producers, against one another and made allies out of longtime...

The trade war with China has cost US producers and consumers hundreds of billions of dollars since 2018. Yet relatively few US businesses took action to oppose it. This study reports the results of an elite survey experiment on business political activity toward trade policy. Researchers...