Financial Stability
Financial Systems: The Anatomy of the Market Economy How the financial system is...
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IWH FDI Micro Database
IWH FDI Micro Database The IWH FDI Micro Database (FDI = Foreign Direct...
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Centre for Evidence-based Policy Advice
Centre for Evidence-based Policy Advice (IWH-CEP) ...
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Transactional and Relational Approaches to Political Connections and the Cost of Debt
Taufiq Arifin, Iftekhar Hasan, Rezaul Kabir
Journal of Corporate Finance,
December
2020
Abstract
This paper examines the economic effects of a firm's approach to developing and maintaining political connections. Specifically, we investigate whether lenders favor transactional connection as opposed to relational connection. By tracing firms in a politically volatile emerging democracy in Indonesia, we find that firms following a transactional political connection strategy experience a relatively lower cost of debt than those with a relational strategy. The effect is more pronounced for firms facing high financial distress. The finding is robust to cost of bank loans and a variety of regression methods. Overall, the evidence suggests that in times of frequently changing political regimes, firms benefit from a transactional relationship with politicians as it enables to update connection with the government in power. Relational connection is valuable for a firm only when the political regime connected with it gains power.
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01.07.2020 • 11/2020
New Horizon 2020 project: The Challenge of the Social Impact of Energy Transitions
Funded by the European Commission’s Framework Programme Horizon 2020, the ENTRANCES project recently closed its kick-off meeting with a high scientific and institutional participation, and taking on the challenge of modeling the social impact of the energy transition.
Oliver Holtemöller
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Corporate Misconduct and the Cost of Private Debt: Evidence from China
Xian Gu, Iftekhar Hasan, Haitian Lu
Comparative Economic Studies,
No. 3,
2019
Abstract
Using a comprehensive dataset of corporate lawsuits in China, we investigate the implications of corporate misconduct on the cost of private debt. Evidence reveals that firms involved in litigations obtain subsequent loans with stricter pricing terms, 15.1 percent higher loan spreads, than non-litigated borrowers. Strong political connection and repeated relationship help to flatten the sensitivity of loan pricing to litigation. Nonbank financial institutions react in stronger manner to corporate misconduct than traditional banks in pricing loans. Overall, we show that private debt holders care about borrowers’ wrongdoing in the past.
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01.04.2019 • 8/2019
Bank profitability increases after eliminating consolidation barriers
When two banks merge because political consolidation barriers are abolished, the combined entity is considerably more profitable and useful to the real economy. This is the headline result of an analysis of compulsory savings banks mergers carried out by the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH). The study yields important insights for the German and the European banking market.
Michael Koetter
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Political Influence and Financial Flexibility: Evidence from China
Xian Gu, Iftekhar Hasan, Yun Zhu
Journal of Banking and Finance,
February
2019
Abstract
This paper investigates how political influence affects firms’ financial flexibility and speed of adjustment toward target leverage ratios. We find that at the macro level, firms in environments with high political advantages, proxied by provincial affiliations with heads of state as well as political status and party rank of provincial leaders, adjust faster. At the micro level, firms that are state-owned, have CPC members as executives, or bear low exposure to changes in political uncertainty adjust faster. When interacted, the micro-level political factors have more significant impact.
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Politics, Banks, and Sub-sovereign Debt: Unholy Trinity or Divine Coincidence?
Michael Koetter, Alexander Popov
Deutsche Bundesbank Discussion Paper,
No. 53,
2018
Abstract
We exploit election-driven turnover in State and local governments in Germany to study how banks adjust their securities portfolios in response to the loss of political connections. We find that local savings banks, which are owned by their host county and supervised by local politicians, increase significantly their holdings of home-State sovereign bonds when the local government and the State government are dominated by different political parties. Banks' holdings of other securities, like federal bonds, bonds issued by other States, or stocks, are not affected by election outcomes. We argue that banks use sub-sovereign bond purchases to gain access to politically distant government authorities.
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Connecting to Power: Political Connections, Innovation, and Firm Dynamics
Ufuk Akcigit, Salomé Baslandze, Francesca Lotti
NBER Working Paper,
No. 25136,
2018
Abstract
How do political connections affect firm dynamics, innovation, and creative destruction? To answer this question, we build a firm dynamics model, where we allow firms to invest in innovation and/or political connection to advance their productivity and to overcome certain market frictions. Our model generates a number of theoretical testable predictions and highlights a new interaction between static gains and dynamic losses from rent-seeking in aggregate productivity. We test the predictions of our model using a brand-new dataset on Italian firms and their workers, spanning the period from 1993 to 2014, where we merge: (i) firm-level balance sheet data; (ii) social security data on the universe of workers; (iii) patent data from the European Patent Office; (iv) the national registry of local politicians; and (v) detailed data on local elections in Italy. We find that firm-level political connections are widespread, especially among large firms, and that industries with a larger share of politically connected firms feature worse firm dynamics. We identify a leadership paradox: when compared to their competitors, market leaders are much more likely to be politically connected, but much less likely to innovate. In addition, political connections relate to a higher rate of survival, as well as growth in employment and revenue, but not in productivity – a result that we also confirm using a regression discontinuity design.
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