Papers & Opinions


    Paper


    Posted on 5 August 2024

    We review an empirical literature that studies how political polarization affects financial decisions. We first discuss the degree of partisan segregation in finance and corporate America, the mechanisms through which...

    Paper


    Posted on 10 July 2024

    We study the interplay between a "one person-one vote" political system and "one share-one vote" corporate governance regime. The political system sets Pigouvian subsidies, while corporate governance determines firm-specific public...

    Paper


    Posted on 1 May 2024

    Can participation in financial markets lead individuals to reevaluate the costs of conflict, change their political attitudes, and even their votes? Prior to the 2015 Israeli elections, we randomly assigned...

    Paper


    Posted on 25 April 2024

    We document that in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which increased in the ability of the wealthy to finance political campaigns, the share of total electoral...

    Paper


    Posted on 19 April 2024

    How can we build trust, especially in polarized societies? We propose that exposure to broad financial markets—where individuals place their assets in the hands of large groups of unfamiliar agents...

    Paper


    Posted on 22 March 2024

    The English Parliament’s struggle for supremacy against monarchical dictatorship during the Civil War (1642–1648) was crucial for the establishment of representative government, yet its lessons continue to be debated. I...

    Paper


    Posted on 22 December 2023

    This study explores whether firms adjust their liquidity in response to heightened uncertainty and expropriation risk associated with populism. Using an event study approach, we consistently find that firms reduce...

    Paper


    Posted on 27 November 2023

    We examine the roles of commercial bank ownership and CEO faction membership in facilitating or in hindering the implementation of central bank policy in China. Both ownership and membership matter:...

    Opinion


    Posted on 6 November 2023

    This year’s edition of the CEPR Conference Series on the Political Economy of Finance took place in the beautiful Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam. This edition gathered a great lineup of scholars...

    Paper


    Posted on 5 October 2023

    We formalize Zingales' (2017) argument about the link between corporate economic characteristics and political influence in a setup that exhibits an inverse relationship between citizens' participation in production and the...

    Paper


    Posted on 18 July 2023

    A first-order concern regarding sustainable finance is that it may crowd out individual support for more effective, policy-driven approaches to address societal challenges. We test the validity of this concern...

    Paper


    Posted on 11 May 2023

    Using data on roll-call voting patterns of U.S. state legislators from 1993 to 2016, we find a negative relationship between firm investment and state legislative polarization, measured as the ideological...

    Paper


    Posted on 20 April 2023

    In the last three decades, legal delegation of monetary policy to independent central banks (CBI) has achieved the status of a global norm of good governance. The recent backlash against this...

    Paper


    Posted on 29 March 2023

    National surveillance is often insufficient to identify transnational issues. One solution to this problem is to delegate to international organizations (IOs) the power to surveil activity in numerous states simultaneously,...

    Paper


    Posted on 9 February 2023

    Because of secrecy, little is known about the political economy of central bank lending. Utilizing a novel, hand-collected historical daily dataset on loans to commercial banks, we analyze how personal...