Big Business Owners and Politics: Investigating the Economic Incentives of Holding Top Office

Pramuan Bunkanwanicha, Yupana Wiwattanakantang (yupana@nus.edu.sg) and ユパナ ウィワッタナカンタン

No 2006-10, CEI Working Paper Series from Center for Economic Institutions, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University

Abstract: This paper investigates the mechanisms that firms use to get state favors. We focus on a less well studied but common mechanism: business owners seeking election to top office. Using Thailand as a research setting, we find that business owners who rely on government concessions or are wealthier are more likely to run for top office. Once in power the market valuation of their firms increases dramatically. Surprisingly, the owners' political power does not change their firms' financing strategies. Instead, we show that business owners in top office use their policy decision powers to implement regulations and public policies favorable to their firms. Such policies hinder not only domestic competitors but also foreign investors. As a result, connected firms are able to seize more market share.

Keywords: Business groups; Corporate governance; Emerging economies; Family firms; Political connections (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G15 G34 G38 K23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2006-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-law, nep-pol and nep-sea
Note: October 13, 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/hermes/ir/re/13486/wp2006-10a.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hit:hitcei:2006-10

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEI Working Paper Series from Center for Economic Institutions, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Reiko Suzuki (suzukicr@ier.hit-u.ac.jp this e-mail address is bad, please contact repec@repec.org).