IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/rfinst/v33y2020i7p3031-3087..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Politics, State Ownership, and Corporate Investments

Author

Listed:
  • Shashwat Alok
  • Meghana Ayyagari

Abstract

We document a political cycle in the investment decisions of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) by using the constitutionally mandated election schedule in India as a source of exogenous variation in politicians’ incentive to cater to voters. Using a project-level investment database, we find that SOEs announce more capital expenditure projects in election years, especially in infrastructure, and in districts with close elections, high-ranking politicians, and left-wing incumbents. SOE projects in election years have negative announcement returns, suggesting a loss in shareholder value. These patterns are not seen in nongovernment firms or in off-election years. (JEL G31, G38, D72, D73, P16)Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

Suggested Citation

  • Shashwat Alok & Meghana Ayyagari, 2020. "Politics, State Ownership, and Corporate Investments," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 33(7), pages 3031-3087.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:33:y:2020:i:7:p:3031-3087.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rfs/hhz102
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Barraza, Santiago & Rossi, Martín A & Ruzzier, Christian A, 2022. "Sleeping with the enemy: The perils of having the government on(the)board," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 641-651.
    2. Wadhwa, Kavita & Syamala, Sudhakara Reddy, 2023. "Are business groups different from other family firms? Evidence from corporate investments during political uncertainty," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    3. Hu, Jun & Long, Wenbin & Luo, Le & Peng, Yuanhuai, 2021. "Share pledging and optimism in analyst earnings forecasts: Evidence from China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    4. Ghosh, Saibal, 2022. "Elections and provisioning behavior: Assessing the Indian evidence," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 46(1).
    5. Oleksandr Talavera & Shuxing Yin & Mao Zhang, 2022. "Political motives of excess leverage in state-owned firms," Discussion Papers 22-04, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    6. Finn Tarp & Sam Jones & Felix Schilling, 2021. "Doing business while holding public office: Evidence from Mozambique’s firm registry," DERG working paper series 21-08, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Development Economics Research Group (DERG).
    7. Saibal Ghosh, 2020. "Bank Lending and Monetary Transmission: Does Politics Matter?," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 18(2), pages 359-381, June.
    8. Saibal Ghosh, 2023. "Political connections and bank behaviour," Economic Notes, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, vol. 52(1), February.
    9. Ting Wang & Rujun Wang & Hua Zhang, 2022. "Does Industrial Policy Reduce Corporate Investment Efficiency? Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-23, December.
    10. Feldman, David & Kang, Chang-Mo & Li, Jiaming & Saxena, Konark, 2021. "Politically motivated corporate decisions as tournament participation/inclusion games," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    11. Neeru Chaudhry & Chris Veld, 2023. "Political uncertainty and investments by private and state‐owned enterprises," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 23(3), pages 584-614, September.
    12. Mario Daniele Amore & Margherita Corina, 2021. "Political elections and corporate investment: International evidence," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 52(9), pages 1775-1796, December.
    13. Goodell, John & Li, Mingsheng & Liu, Desheng, 2021. "Price informativeness and state-owned enterprises: Considering their heterogeneity," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    14. Talavera, Oleksandr & Yin, Shuxing & Zhang, Mao, 2024. "Political motives of excess leverage in state firms," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G31 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Capital Budgeting; Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies
    • G38 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:33:y:2020:i:7:p:3031-3087.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfsssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.