The Economics of Politically Connected Firms

Jay Choi and Marcel Thum

No 2025, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Political connections between firms and autocratic regimes are not secret and often even publicly displayed in many developing economies. We argue that tying a firm’s available rent to a regime’s survival acts as a credible commitment forcing entrepreneurs to support the government and to exert effort in its stabilization. In return, politically connected firms get access to profitable markets and are exempted from the regime’s extortion. We show that such a gift exchange between government and politically connected firms can only exist if certain institutional conditions are met. In particular, the stability of the regime has to be sufficiently low and the regime needs the power to exploit independent firms. We also show that building up a network of politically connected firms acts as a substitute for investments in autonomous stability (such as spending on military and police force). The indirect strategy of stabilizing a regime via politically connected firms gradually becomes inferior when a regime’s exploitative power rises.

Keywords: politically connected firms; clientelism; political stability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H10 H26 H32 L10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The economics of politically-connected firms (2009)
Working Paper: The economics of politically-connected firms (2008)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_2025

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