Business Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-2013
Volume
5
Issue
3
Journal
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
First Page
170
URL with Digital Object Identifier
https://doi.org/10.1257/app.5.3.170
Last Page
188
Abstract
Individuals dominate money in politics, accounting for over 90% of federal campaign contributions, yet studies of individuals’ giving patterns are scarce. We construct a new dataset to examine all of the contributions made between 1991 and 2008 by all 2,198 people who served as S&P 500 CEOs for any portion of that interval. We then exploit variation in these individuals’ leadership status over this span of their careers to identify that becoming an S&P 500 CEO causes a $4,000 jump per election-cycle in personal political giving relative to these individuals’ pre-CEO contribution levels. While some fraction of CEOs’ contributions can be attributed to their long-standing preferences and their ability to contribute, the striking change in behavior we identify upon individuals taking leadership roles cannot be explained by these factors alone. Despite causing individuals to give more money to more candidates, more political action committees (PACs), and more parties, serving as a CEO has little effect on partisan leanings. A battery of tests aimed at falsifying identification assumptions and exposing limits to our specifications’ robustness reinforce our findings—and demonstrate that, among other things, the patterns we identify hold whether individuals are promoted to CEO internally or are appointed externally.
Notes
This is the accepted manuscript of the paper published at: Fremeth, Adam, Brian Kelleher Richter, and Brandon Schaufele. 2013. "Campaign Contributions over CEOs' Careers." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 5 (3): 170-88. https://doi.org/10.1257/app.5.3.170