2019/02/07 by Alexei V. Ovtchinnikov, Syed Walid Reza, Yanhui Wu · 1 citation
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Business #Economics #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Estimation #Industrial organization #Instrumental variable #Law #Legislation #Legislature #Management #Natural experiment #Political Influence and Corporate Strategies #Political activism #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Set (abstract data type)
paper · open access · doi:10.1017/s0022109019000115
published in Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 55(3), 989-1024 (Cambridge University Press)
openalex publication_date 2019/02/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
We hypothesize that political activism is valuable because it helps reduce political uncertainty, which, in turn, fosters firm innovation. We find that firms that support more politicians, winning politicians, politicians on congressional committees with jurisdictional authority over the firms’ industries, and politicians who join those committees innovate more. We employ a natural experiment to show a causal effect of political activism on innovation. We also show evidence of intra-industry and geographical political activism spillovers.