Do political connections affect corporate poverty alleviation decisions? Evidence from China

Huiming Zhang, Jiying Huang, Kai Wu, Shouyang Wang, Christian Nygaard and Yueming Qiu

China Economic Review, 2022, vol. 73, issue C

Abstract: Programs to alleviate poverty by corporations are increasingly popular as a new form of corporate social responsibility. This study examines how the political connections of a firm's chairperson are associated with decisions to alleviate poverty based on a sample of listed Chinese firms from 2016 to 2018. We find that the chairperson's political connections increase the probability of participation and the amount of investment in programs to alleviate poverty. This positive relationship is mainly manifested in firms with high agency costs and low regional economic conditions. In addition, the chairperson's political connections are not related to the efficiency of the poverty alleviation program. Politically connected firms receive less government recognition with an increase in investment in poverty alleviation. Our findings are consistent with the notion that firms participate in poverty alleviation programs for reciprocal favor exchanges, but they fail to manage these programs efficiently.

Keywords: Political connections; Corporate poverty alleviation; Stochastic frontier model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:73:y:2022:i:c:s1043951x22000438

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2022.101785

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