The Politics of CEOs

The Politics of CEOs

Alma Cohen, Moshe Hazan, Roberto Tallarita, David Weiss

Series number :

Serial Number: 
450/2019

Date posted :

May 14 2019

Last revised :

November 25 2019
SSRN Share

Keywords

  • political spending • 
  • Political Contributions • 
  • Republicans • 
  • Democrats • 
  • CEOs • 
  • corporate political influence

This article studies the political preferences of chief executive officers (CEOs) of public companies. We use Federal Election Commission records to compile a comprehensive database of the political contributions made by more than 3800 individuals who served as CEOs of Standard & Poor’s 1500 companies between 2000 and 2017. We find a substantial preference for Republican candidates.

We identify how this pattern is related to the company’s industry, region, and CEO gender. In addition, we show that companies led by Republican CEOs tend to be less transparent to investors with respect to their political spending. Finally, we discuss the policy implications of our analysis.

Published in

Published in: 
Publication Title: 
Forthcoming, Journal of Legal Analysis, Volume 11, 2019

Authors

Real name:
Moshe Hazan
Real name:
Roberto Tallarita
Real name:
David Weiss