The (Market) Value of State Honors

Stéphane Benveniste (), Renaud Coulomb () and Marc Sangnier ()
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Stéphane Benveniste: Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne et Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, AMSE (Aix-Marseille School of Economics), https://ces.pantheonsorbonne.fr
Renaud Coulomb: Mines Paris - PSL, Paris
Marc Sangnier: Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, AMSE (Aix-Marseille School of Economics)

Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne from Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne

Abstract: State awards to civilians are a widespread social phenomenon across space and time. This paper provides a quantification of the impact of State awards given to Directors on the stock value of their firms. We link a comprehensive dataset of recipients of the Légion d'honneur-the most prestigious official award in France-over the 1995-2019 period to Board positions in French listed firms. We document positive abnormal returns in the stocks of recipients' firms at the date of the award. This finding does not apply to those previously identified as politically connected through shared education in elite graduate schools; rather, it is driven by recipients for whom the awards newly signal a valuable access to policy-makers, establishing State awards as a new indicator of political connections

Keywords: Awards; State Honors; Symbolic Capital; Political Connections (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 D72 G14 G18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 62 pages
Date: 2025-12
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mse:cesdoc:25025

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