Finance and ideology: The firm-level channels

We provide firm-level evidence on how politicians’ ideologies affect economic outcomes and financial development by exploring a unique setting of ideological discontinuity in China from Maoism to Dengism around 1978. We find the ideological exposure during a politician’s early adulthood has an endur...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: LIANG, Hao, WANG, Rong, ZHU, Haikun
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/7124
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/lkcsb_research/article/8123/viewcontent/SSRN_id3494916__1_.pdf
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Institution: Singapore Management University
Language: English
Description
Summary:We provide firm-level evidence on how politicians’ ideologies affect economic outcomes and financial development by exploring a unique setting of ideological discontinuity in China from Maoism to Dengism around 1978. We find the ideological exposure during a politician’s early adulthood has an enduring effect on contemporary firm and city policies. Firms governed by “Mao’s mayors” have more stakeholder spending, lower pay inequality, and less internationalization than those governed by Deng’s. Further evidence suggests politicians’ ideology may affect economic activities through channels other than economic policy. Selection bias, endogenous matching and mayor age effect are unlikely to drive our results.