About PolEconFin

PolEconFin is a platform for researchers active in political economy of finance. This initiative seeks to provide a meeting point for theorists and empiricists with shared interests and build a research community with a focus on public policy.

PolEconFin comprises of two related projects:

1. The online platform to support and promote research in political economy of finance

2. The Stigler Center-CEPR Conference Series to stimulate in-person interaction between researchers

Latest Papers & Opinions

Why Divest? The Political and Informational Roles of Institutions in Asset Stranding

Posted by

ALI LAZRAK

August 3, 2025

We model stakeholder-driven institutional divestiture that promotes harmful-asset stranding through both an economic exposure channel and financial prices. We introduce two novel mechanisms. First, institutional divestiture weakens stakeholders’ asset exposures, improving political conditions for stranding. Second, institutional divestiture credibly communicates information about citizen preferences, environmental harm, and economic benefits to financial markets and political participants….

Latest Papers & Opinions

Credit Rationing, Electoral Politics, and Incentives

Posted by

Stylianos Papageorgiou

July 22, 2025

This paper develops a unified framework linking credit rationing, electoral politics, and credit terms. Vote-share-maximizing politicians moderate policy in response to credit market frictions, generating an endogenous asymmetry that limits pro-worker outcomes even under populist sentiment. This political feedback, which initially softens credit rationing, allows a strategic creditor to extract higher interest, ultimately intensifying rationing….

Latest Papers & Opinions

Where to Hire? Political Alignment and Internal Labor Allocation

Posted by

Wanyi Wang

June 24, 2025

This paper studies how political alignment between a firm’s CEO and a state’s governor affects internal labor allocation. We find that firms increase employment in politically aligned states, especially when CEOs are more polarized and during periods of heightened polarization. This effect remains robust when we exploit close gubernatorial elections as a source of plausibly…

Latest Papers & Opinions

Economics and Politics of Student Debt Relief

Posted by

Stylianos Papageorgiou

June 3, 2025

We study student debt relief as the product of probabilistic voting by an electorate that includes both college graduates and non-college laborers. While politicians favor the most homogeneous group in a probabilistic voting setup, we identify conditions under which politicians forgive student debt even when laborers are more homogeneous than graduates. This political asymmetry in…

Latest Papers & Opinions

Information, Party Politics, and Public Support for Central Bank Independence

Posted by

Ana Carolina Garriga

May 15, 2025

Why do citizens support central bank independence (CBI)? Despite important research on economic and political reasons to grant independence to central banks, we know little about what the public thinks about CBI. This is important given citizens’ potential role in constraining politicians’ ability to alter CBI. We hypothesize that support for CBI is influenced by…

Latest Papers & Opinions

Partisan Bias in Inflation Expectations: Evidence from the 2024 US Election

Posted by

Ana Carolina Garriga

April 30, 2025

How does partisanship affect inflation expectations? While most research focuses on how inflation impacts political approval and voter behavior, we analyze the political roots of inflation expectations. We argue that elections serve as key moments when citizens update their economic outlook based on anticipated policy changes, and that partisanship influences these re-evaluations. Using a two-wave…