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Does it help to have friends in high places? Bank stock performance and congressional committee chairmanships

Daniel Gropper, John S. Jahera and Jung Chul Park

Journal of Banking & Finance, 2013, vol. 37, issue 6, 1986-1999

Abstract: Does a politician with power in the U.S. Congress positively affect the value of firms headquartered in their home state? We investigate this question by examining the profitability and stock performance of commercial banks. Banks can be enormously influenced by the political and regulatory environment. We find that banks headquartered in states where a Senator or member of the House of Representatives serves as the chairman on their respective banking committee in Congress outperform banks headquartered in other states. In addition, we find that this “chair effect” is more pronounced when the committee chairs are strongly aligned with other politicians in Congress, when they are more experienced, and when banks are clustered in the home state, suggesting that the potential benefits generated from chairmanship are in more demand. Overall, our results suggest that there are some important value implications of a local politician’s power in Congress.

Keywords: Political effects; Government regulation; Bank performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G12 G18 G21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:37:y:2013:i:6:p:1986-1999

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2013.01.003

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