Do politicians affect firm outcomes? Evidence from connections to the German Federal Parliament

André Diegmann (geb. Nolte), Laura Pohlan and Andrea Weber

No 15/2024, IWH Discussion Papers from Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH)

Abstract: We study how connections to German federal parliamentarians affect firm dynamics by constructing a novel dataset linking politicians and election candidates to the universe of firms. To identify the causal effect of access to political power, we exploit (i) new appointments to the company leadership team and (ii) discontinuities around the marginal seat of party election lists. Our results reveal that connections lead to reductions in firm exits, gradual increases in employment growth without improvements in productivity. Adding information on credit ratings, subsidies and procurement contracts allows us to distinguish between mechanisms driving the effects over the politician's career.

Keywords: firm performance; identification; political connections; politicians (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 L25 O43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025, Revised 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-ent, nep-inv, nep-pol and nep-sbm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/296476.2/1/iwh-dp2024-15rev.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Do Politicians Affect Firm Outcomes? Evidence from Connections to the German Federal Parliament (2025)
Working Paper: Do Politicians Affect Firm Outcomes? Evidence from Connections to the German Federal Parliament (2024)
Working Paper: Do Politicians Affect Firm Outcomes? Evidence from Connections to the German Federal Parliament (2024)
Working Paper: Do politicians affect firm outcomes? Evidence from connections to the German Federal Parliament (2024)
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:zbw:iwhdps:296476

DOI: 10.18717/dpcqgq-a590

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IWH Discussion Papers from Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().