IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/11837.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Company Stock Reactions to the 2016 Election Shock: Trump, Taxes and Trade

Author

Listed:
  • Wagner, Alexander F.
  • Zeckhauser, Richard
  • Ziegler, Alexandre

Abstract

The election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States of America on 11/8/2016 came as a surprise. Markets responded swiftly and decisively. This note investigates both the initial stock market reaction to the election, and the longer-term reaction through the end of 2016. We find that the individual stock price reactions to the election – that is, the market’s vote – reflect investor expectations on economic growth, taxes, and trade policy. Heavy industry and banking were relative winners, whereas healthcare, medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, textiles, and apparel were among the relative losers. High-beta stocks and companies with a hitherto high tax burden benefited from the election. Although internationally-oriented companies may profit under some plans of the new administration, several other arguments suggest a more favorable climate for domestically-oriented companies. Investors have found the domestic-favoring arguments to be stronger. While investors incorporated the expected consequences of the election for US growth and tax policy into prices relatively quickly, it took them more time to digest the consequences of shifts in trade policy on firms’ prospects.

Suggested Citation

  • Wagner, Alexander F. & Zeckhauser, Richard & Ziegler, Alexandre, 2017. "Company Stock Reactions to the 2016 Election Shock: Trump, Taxes and Trade," CEPR Discussion Papers 11837, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:11837
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP11837
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

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

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael J. Barclay, 2003. "Price Discovery and Trading After Hours," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(4), pages 1041-1073.
    2. Pedro Santa‐Clara & Rossen Valkanov, 2003. "The Presidential Puzzle: Political Cycles and the Stock Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(5), pages 1841-1872, October.
    3. Schwert, G William, 1981. "Using Financial Data to Measure Effects of Regulation," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(1), pages 121-158, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Wagner, Alexander F. & Zeckhauser, Richard & Ziegler, Alexandre, 2020. "The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: Which Firms Won? Which Lost?," CEPR Discussion Papers 14950, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Yi Huang & Chen Lin & Sibo Liu & Heiwai Tang, 2018. "Trade Linkages and Firm Value: Evidence from the 2018 US-China “Trade War”," IHEID Working Papers 11-2018, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies.
    3. Daniele Girardi, 2018. "Political shocks and financial markets : regression-discontinuity evidence from national elections," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2018-08, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics.
    4. Blanchard, Olivier & Collins, Christopher G. & Jahan-Parvar, Mohammad R. & Pellet, Thomas & Wilson, Beth Anne, 2018. "A year of rising dangerously? The U.S. stock market performance in the aftermath of the presidential election," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 489-502.
    5. Stefano Ramelli & Alexander F Wagner & Richard J Zeckhauser & Alexandre Ziegler, 2021. "Investor Rewards to Climate Responsibility: Stock-Price Responses to the Opposite Shocks of the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Elections [Asset pricing with liquidity risk]," The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(4), pages 748-787.
    6. Pedro L. Angosto‐Fernández & Victoria Ferrández‐Serrano, 2022. "Independence day: Political risk and cross‐sectional determinants of firm exposure after the Catalan crisis," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(4), pages 4318-4335, October.
    7. Wagner, Alexander F. & Zeckhauser, Richard J. & Ziegler, Alexandre, 2017. "Paths to Convergence: Stock Price Behavior after Donald Trump's Election," Working Paper Series rwp17-039, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    8. Zhang, Si Ying, 2021. "Using equity market reactions and network analysis to infer global supply chain interdependencies in the context of COVID-19," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    9. Ziemowit Bednarek & Jacqueline Doremus & Sarah Stith, 2021. "U.S. Cannabis Laws Projected to Cost Generic and Brand Pharmaceutical Firms Billions," Working Papers 2102, California Polytechnic State University, Department of Economics.
    10. Brownback, Andy & Novotny, Aaron, 2018. "Social desirability bias and polling errors in the 2016 presidential election," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 38-56.
    11. de Area Leão Pereira, Eder Johnson & da Silva, Marcus Fernandes & da Cunha Lima, I.C. & Pereira, H.B.B., 2018. "Trump’s Effect on stock markets: A multiscale approach," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 512(C), pages 241-247.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wagner, Alexander F. & Zeckhauser, Richard J. & Ziegler, Alexandre, 2018. "Company stock price reactions to the 2016 election shock: Trump, taxes, and trade," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(2), pages 428-451.
    2. Alexander F. Wagner & Richard J. Zeckhauser & Alexandre Ziegler, 2017. "Paths to Convergence: Stock Price Behavior After Donald Trump's Election," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 17-36, Swiss Finance Institute, revised Feb 2018.
    3. Sojli, Elvira & Tham, Wing Wah, 2015. "Divided governments and futures prices," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 187(2), pages 622-633.
    4. John J. Shon, 2010. "Do Stock Returns Vary With Campaign Contributions? Bush Vs. Gore: The Florida Recount," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(3), pages 257-281, November.
    5. Jürgen Huber & Michael Kirchler, 2013. "Corporate campaign contributions and abnormal stock returns after presidential elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 156(1), pages 285-307, July.
    6. Cheng, Mengyao, 2022. "Legislative gridlock and stock return dispersion around roll-call votes," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    7. Ellul, Andrew & Holden, Craig W. & Jain, Pankaj & Jennings, Robert, 2007. "Order dynamics: Recent evidence from the NYSE," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(5), pages 636-661, December.
    8. Stefano Ramelli & Alexander F Wagner, 2020. "Feverish Stock Price Reactions to COVID-19," The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 9(3), pages 622-655.
    9. Veith, Stefan & Werner, Jörg R. & Zimmermann, Jochen, 2009. "Capital market response to emission rights returns: Evidence from the European power sector," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 605-613, July.
    10. Carvalho, Augusto & Guimaraes, Bernardo, 2018. "State-controlled companies and political risk: Evidence from the 2014 Brazilian election," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 66-78.
    11. Baruch, Shmuel & Panayides, Marios & Venkataraman, Kumar, 2017. "Informed trading and price discovery before corporate events," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(3), pages 561-588.
    12. Tomaso Duso & Klaus Gugler & Florian Szücs, 2013. "An Empirical Assessment of the 2004 EU Merger Policy Reform," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 123(11), pages 596-619, November.
    13. Erik Snowberg & Justin Wolfers & Eric Zitzewitz, 2007. "Partisan Impacts on the Economy: Evidence from Prediction Markets and Close Elections," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(2), pages 807-829.
    14. Sy, Oumar & Zaman, Ashraf Al, 2020. "Is the presidential premium spurious?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 94-104.
    15. Gabriel Desgranges & Celine Rochon, 2008. "Conformism, Public News and Market Effciency," OFRC Working Papers Series 2008fe16, Oxford Financial Research Centre.
    16. Fotis, Panagiotis, 2011. "Firm's damages from antitrust & abuse of dominant position investigations," MPRA Paper 32788, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 13 Aug 2011.
    17. Chen, Cathy Yi-Hsuan & Fengler, Matthias R. & Härdle, Wolfgang Karl & Liu, Yanchu, 2022. "Media-expressed tone, option characteristics, and stock return predictability," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    18. Christiane Goodfellow & Martin T. Bohl, 2011. "Forestalling Floor Closure: Evidence from a Natural Experiment on the German Stock Market," Post-Print hal-00676103, HAL.
    19. Nicholas Taylor, 2011. "Time-varying price discovery in fragmented markets," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(10), pages 717-734.
    20. K. Chau & S. Wong & C. Yiu & Maurice Tse & Frederik Pretorius, 2010. "Do Unexpected Land Auction Outcomes Bring New Information to the Real Estate Market?," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 40(4), pages 480-496, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Stock returns; Event study; Corporate taxes; Trade policy; Corporate interest payments; Post-news drift; Election surprise;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • H25 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Business Taxes and Subsidies
    • O24 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Trade Policy; Factor Movement; Foreign Exchange Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cpr:ceprdp:11837. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.