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The (Market) Value of State Honors

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Abstract

State awards to civilians are a widespread social phenomenon across space and time. This paper provides a quantification of the impact of State awards given to Directors on the stock value of their firms. We link a comprehensive dataset of recipients of the Légion d'honneur-the most prestigious official award in France-over the 1995-2019 period to Board positions in French listed firms. We document positive abnormal returns in the stocks of recipients' firms at the date of the award. This finding does not apply to those previously identified as politically connected through shared education in elite graduate schools; rather, it is driven by recipients for whom the awards newly signal a valuable access to policy-makers, establishing State awards as a new indicator of political connections

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  • Stéphane Benveniste & Renaud Coulomb & Marc Sangnier, 2025. "The (Market) Value of State Honors," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 25025, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    • Handle: RePEc:mse:cesdoc:25025
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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation

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