Publications

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08 Oct 2020
News

Marlous van Waijenburg Appointed AAAS Affiliate Faculty

2025
Working Paper

The Political Polarization of Corporate America

By: Vyacheslav Fos, Elisabeth Kempf and Margarita Tsoutsoura

U.S. executives are increasingly segregating by political party. We establish this new fact using political affiliations from voter registration records for top executives of S&P 1500 firms between 2008 and 2022. We identify key drivers of this trend, including... View Details

Keywords: Political Polarization; Partisanship; Executives; Government and Politics; Business and Shareholder Relations; United States

SSRN

2023
Working Paper

Words Can Hurt: How Political Communication Can Change the Pace of an Epidemic

By: Jessica Gagete-Miranda, Lucas Argentieri Mariani and Paula Rettl

While elite-cue effects on public opinion are well-documented, questions remain as to when and why voters use elite cues to inform their opinions and behaviors. Using experimental and observational data from Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic, we study how leader... View Details

December 2021
Article

Partisan Professionals: Evidence from Credit Rating Analysts

By: Elisabeth Kempf and Margarita Tsoutsoura

Partisan perception affects the actions of professionals in the financial sector. Using a novel dataset linking credit rating analysts to party affiliations from voter records, we show that analysts who are not affiliated with the U.S. president’s party downward-adjust... View Details

Keywords: Political Affiliation; Credit Rating Agencies; Political Partisanship; Political Elections; Perception; Credit

2023
Working Paper

The Effect of Childhood Environment on Political Behavior: Evidence from Young U.S. Movers, 1992–2021

By: Jacob R. Brown, Enrico Cantoni, Sahil Chinoy, Martin Koenen and Vincent Pons

We ask how childhood environment shapes political behavior. We measure young voters’ participation and party affiliation in nationally comprehensive voter files and reconstruct their childhood location histories based on their parents’ addresses. We compare outcomes of... View Details

Keywords: Political Parties; Government and Politics; Age; Residency; Voting

Purchase

2022
Working Paper

Politics at Work

By: Emanuele Colonnelli, Valdemar Pinho Neto and Edoardo Teso

We study how individual political views shape firm behavior and labor market outcomes. Using new micro-data on the political affiliation of business owners and private-sector workers in Brazil over the 2002–2019 period, we first document the presence of political... View Details

Keywords: Private Sector; Employees; Prejudice and Bias; Brazil

December 2021
Article

Left- and Right-Leaning News Organizations Use Negative Emotional Content and Elicit User Engagement Similarly

By: Andrea Bellovary, Nathaniel Young and Amit Goldenberg

Negativity has historically dominated news content; however, little research has examined how news organizations use affect on social media, where content is generally positive. In the current project we ask a few questions: Do news organizations on Twitter use... View Details

Keywords: Negative Press; Twitter; Political Affiliation; Affect; News; Media; Internet and the Web; Emotions; Perspective; Social Media

Forthcoming
Article

Geographies of Discontent: Public Service Deprivation and the Rise of the Far Right in Italy

By: Simone Cremaschi, Paula Rettl, Marco Cappelluti and Catherine E. De Vries

Electoral support for far-right parties is often linked to geographies of discontent. We argue that public service deprivation, defined as reduced access to public services at the local level, plays an important role in explaining these patterns. By exploiting an... View Details

Keywords: Election Outcomes; Electoral Behavior; Political Affiliation; Political Culture; Public Service; Political Elections; Policy; Government and Politics; Surveys; Geographic Location; Immigration; Europe; Italy

2011
Other Unpublished Work

Military Ties, New Ventures, and Political Risk Management in Emerging Economies

By: Shon R. Hiatt and Wesley Sine

New ventures in emerging economies face a number of challenges such as political instability, corruption, and uncertain property rights that can severely hinder their ability to grow and survive, yet little is known about how startups can mitigate such risk. Using data... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Business Startups; Government and Politics; Developing Countries and Economies; Latin America

30 Sep 2015
Research & Ideas

Political Polarization: Why We All Just Can't Get Along

A recent study suggests that America’s political polarization is driven more by incorrect beliefs and stereotypes about the other side than distaste with those people. That should be good news for those wondering how to knit polarized... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Banking; Financial Services

01 Oct 2024
Research & Ideas

How Politics Drives Business Decisions in a Polarized Nation

Workplaces are divided by political party Using voter registration data and information from business research firm L2, one study revealed “substantial partisan segregation” at the highest levels of executives at S&P 1500 firms, with... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

May 2010
Article

Elections and Discretionary Accruals: Evidence from 2004

By: Karthik Ramanna and Sugata Roychowdhury

We examine the accrual choices of outsourcing firms with links to U.S. congressional candidates during the 2004 elections, when corporate outsourcing was a major campaign issue. We find that politically connected firms with more extensive outsourcing activities have... View Details

Keywords: Political Economy; Accounting Information; Accruals Management; Campaign Contributions; Discretionary Accruals; Election Outcomes; Political Currency; Political Process; Social Issues; Political Elections; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Motivation and Incentives; Earnings Management; Welfare; United States

SSRN

February 2013
Article

Towards an Understanding of the Role of Standard Setters in Standard Setting

By: Abigail M. Allen and Karthik Ramanna

We investigate the effect of standard setters in standard setting: we examine how certain professional and political characteristics of FASB members and SEC commissioners predict the accounting "reliability" and "relevance" of proposed standards. Notably, we find FASB... View Details

Keywords: FASB; Politics; Relevance; Reliability; Standard Setting; Accounting; Standards; Fair Value Accounting; Government and Politics; Personal Characteristics

SSRN

September–October 2020
Article

The Air War Versus the Ground Game: An Analysis of Multi-Channel Marketing in U.S. Presidential Elections

By: Lingling Zhang and Doug J. Chung

This study jointly examines the effects of television advertising and field operations in U.S. presidential elections, with the former referred to as the “air war” and the latter as the “ground game.” Specifically, the study focuses on how different campaign... View Details

Keywords: Multi-channel Marketing; Ground Campaigning; Political Campaigns; Discrete-choice Model; Instrumental Variables; Political Elections; Marketing Channels; Advertising; United States

June 2007 (Revised September 2021)
Case

Thomas J. Watson, IBM and Nazi Germany

By: Geoffrey Jones, Grace Ballor and Adrian Brown

Considers the strategy of U.S.-owned IBM, then a manufacturer of punch cards, in Nazi Germany before 1937. Opens with IBM CEO Thomas J. Watson meeting Adolf Hitler in his capacity as President of the International Chamber of Commerce. IBM had acquired a German company... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Values and Beliefs; Multinational Firms and Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Investment; Business and Government Relations; Germany; United States