Corporate policy

    Papers & Opinions

    Corporate finance | Empirics | Political institutions

    Corporate Cash under Populist Leadership: A Tale of Two Variants

    Paper

    Posted on 12 February 2025

    By Wei-Fong Pan

    How do firms manage liquidity in populist-led countries? Using close elections involving populists, we test two hypotheses: populism prompts firms to either (i) increase cash holdings due to political risk...
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    Corporate finance | Empirics | Political institutions

    Going Extreme: The Impact of Political Polarization on Corporate Investment

    Paper

    Posted on 11 May 2023

    By Tiecheng Leng

    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...
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    Corporate finance | Empirics

    Polarized Corporate Boards

    Paper

    Posted on 16 July 2021

    By Phong Ngo

    We show that political polarization between directors and the CEO negatively impacts the effectiveness of corporate boards. At the director level, polarization increases directors’ incentive to monitor the CEO but...
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    Corporate finance | Empirics | Political institutions

    Finance and Ideology: The Firm-Level Channels

    Paper

    Posted on 22 June 2021

    By Haikun Zhu

    We investigate how politicians’ ideologies affect economic outcomes and financial development through firm-level channels. We explore a unique setting of ideological change in China from Mao’s ideology to Deng’s around...
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