IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/lawfin/9.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Who Pays a Visit to Brussels? The Firm Value of Cross-Border Political Access to European Commissioners

Author

Listed:
  • Biguri, Kizkitza
  • Stahl, Jörg R.

Abstract

We present novel evidence on the value of cross-border political access. We analyze data on meetings of US multinational enterprises (MNEs) with European Commission (EC) policymakers. Meetings with Commissioners are associated with positive abnormal equity returns. We study channels of value creation through political access in the areas of regulation and taxation. US enterprises with EC meetings are more likely to receive favorable outcomes in their European merger decisions and have lower effective tax rates on foreign income than their peers without meetings. Our results suggest that access to foreign policymakers is of substantial value for MNEs.

Suggested Citation

  • Biguri, Kizkitza & Stahl, Jörg R., 2020. "Who Pays a Visit to Brussels? The Firm Value of Cross-Border Political Access to European Commissioners," LawFin Working Paper Series 9, Goethe University, Center for Advanced Studies on the Foundations of Law and Finance (LawFin).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:lawfin:9
    DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3339871
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/244689/1/lawfin-wp09.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2139/ssrn.3339871?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Deniz Igan & Prachi Mishra, 2014. "Wall Street, Capitol Hill, and K Street: Political Influence and Financial Regulation," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(4), pages 1063-1084.
    2. Croci, Ettore & Pantzalis, Christos & Park, Jung Chul & Petmezas, Dimitris, 2017. "The role of corporate political strategies in M&As," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 260-287.
    3. I. Serdar Dinc & Isil Erel, 2013. "Economic Nationalism in Mergers and Acquisitions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(6), pages 2471-2514, December.
    4. Stephen P. Ferris & Reza Houston & David Javakhadze, 2016. "Friends in the Right Places: The Effect of Political Connections on Corporate Merger Activity," NFI Working Papers 2016-WP-01, Indiana State University, Scott College of Business, Networks Financial Institute.
    5. Eitan Goldman & Jörg Rocholl & Jongil So, 2009. "Do Politically Connected Boards Affect Firm Value?," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(6), pages 2331-2360, June.
    6. Brown, Jeffrey R. & Huang, Jiekun, 2020. "All the president's friends: Political access and firm value," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(2), pages 415-431.
    7. Acemoglu, Daron & Johnson, Simon & Kermani, Amir & Kwak, James & Mitton, Todd, 2016. "The value of connections in turbulent times: Evidence from the United States," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(2), pages 368-391.
    8. Mara Faccio, 2006. "Politically Connected Firms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 369-386, March.
    9. Johnson, Simon & Mitton, Todd, 2003. "Cronyism and capital controls: evidence from Malaysia," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 351-382, February.
    10. Atif Mian & Amir Sufi & Francesco Trebbi, 2010. "The Political Economy of the US Mortgage Default Crisis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 1967-1998, December.
    11. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    12. Narjess Boubakri & Jean-Claude Cosset & Walid Saffar, 2012. "The Impact Of Political Connections On Firms’ Operating Performance And Financing Decisions," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 35(3), pages 397-423, September.
    13. Elvira Sojli & Wing Wah Tham, 2017. "Foreign political connections," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 48(2), pages 244-266, February.
    14. Ferris, Stephen P. & Houston, Reza & Javakhadze, David, 2016. "Friends in the right places: The effect of political connections on corporate merger activity," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 81-102.
    15. Faccio, Mara & Parsley, David C., 2009. "Sudden Deaths: Taking Stock of Geographic Ties," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(3), pages 683-718, June.
    16. Isil Erel & Yeejin Jang & Michael S. Weisbach, 2020. "The Corporate Finance of Multinational Firms," NBER Working Papers 26762, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Pat Akey, 2015. "Valuing Changes in Political Networks: Evidence from Campaign Contributions to Close Congressional Elections," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(11), pages 3188-3223.
    18. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    19. Correia, Maria M., 2014. "Political connections and SEC enforcement," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 241-262.
    20. Fisman David & Fisman Raymond J. & Galef Julia & Khurana Rakesh & Wang Yongxiang, 2012. "Estimating the Value of Connections to Vice-President Cheney," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 13(3), pages 1-20, December.
    21. Raymond Fisman, 2001. "Estimating the Value of Political Connections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 1095-1102, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Colin P. Green & Swarnodeep Homroy, 2022. "Incorporated in Westminster: Channels and Returns to Political Connection in the United Kingdom," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 89(354), pages 377-408, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fink, Alexander & Stahl, Jörg R., 2020. "The value of international political connections: Evidence from Trump's 2016 surprise election," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 691-700.
    2. Child, Travers Barclay & Massoud, Nadia & Schabus, Mario & Zhou, Yifan, 2021. "Surprise election for Trump connections," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 676-697.
    3. Chen, Shuo & Yan, Xun & Yang, Bo, 2020. "Move to success? Headquarters relocation, political favoritism, and corporate performance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    4. Brown, Jeffrey R. & Huang, Jiekun, 2020. "All the president's friends: Political access and firm value," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(2), pages 415-431.
    5. Jackowicz, Krzysztof & Kozłowski, Łukasz & Podgórski, Błażej & Winkler-Drews, Tadeusz, 2020. "Do political connections shield from negative shocks? Evidence from rating changes in advanced emerging economies," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    6. Ozlem Akin & Nicholas S. Coleman & Christian Fons‐Rosen & José‐Luis Peydró, 2021. "Political connections and informed trading: Evidence from TARP," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 50(3), pages 619-644, September.
    7. Acemoglu, Daron & Johnson, Simon & Kermani, Amir & Kwak, James & Mitton, Todd, 2016. "The value of connections in turbulent times: Evidence from the United States," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(2), pages 368-391.
    8. Hu, Yi & Wang, Changyun & Xiao, Gang & Zeng, Jianyu, 2020. "The agency cost of political connections: Evidence from China's File 18," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    9. Luechinger, Simon & Moser, Christoph, 2020. "The European Commission and the revolving door," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    10. Ilona Babenko & Viktar Fedaseyeu & Song Zhang, 2017. "Do CEOs affect employees' political choices?," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 1750, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    11. Coulomb, Renaud & Sangnier, Marc, 2014. "The impact of political majorities on firm value: Do electoral promises or friendship connections matter?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 158-170.
    12. Albuquerque, Rui & Lei, Zicheng & Rocholl, Jörg & Zhang, Chendi, 2020. "Citizens United vs. FEC and corporate political activism," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    13. Croci, Ettore & Pantzalis, Christos & Park, Jung Chul & Petmezas, Dimitris, 2017. "The role of corporate political strategies in M&As," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 260-287.
    14. Park, SeHyun, 2023. "Profitability of politically corrupt firms: Evidence from Romania," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    15. Elvira Sojli & Wing Wah Tham, 2017. "Foreign political connections," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 48(2), pages 244-266, February.
    16. Ozlem Akin & Nicholas S. Coleman & Christian Fons-Rosen & José-Luis Peydró, 2016. "Political Connections: Evidence From Insider Trading Around TARP," Working Papers 935, Barcelona School of Economics.
    17. Lehrer, Nimrod David, 2018. "The value of political connections in a multiparty parliamentary democracy: Evidence from the 2015 elections in Israel," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 13-58.
    18. David Schoenherr, 2019. "Political Connections and Allocative Distortions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 74(2), pages 543-586, April.
    19. Coulomb, Renaud & Sangnier, Marc, 2014. "The impact of political majorities on firm value: Do electoral promises or friendship connections matter?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 158-170.
    20. Luechinger, Simon & Moser, Christoph, 2014. "The value of the revolving door: Political appointees and the stock market," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 93-107.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Cross-border political access; European Commission; firm value;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:lawfin:9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/hoffmde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.