Stock Ownership and Political Behavior: Evidence from Demutualizations
利用相互保险公司转为上市公司的外生冲击，研究发现股票所有权增加导致受影响地区右翼投票比例上升1.7-2.7个百分点，且该效应由公开上市股票驱动。
A setting in which customer-owned mutual companies converted to publicly listed firms created a plausibly exogenous increase in stock ownership. We use this shock to identify the effect of ownership of publicly listed shares on political behavior. Using instrumental variable regressions, difference-in-differences analyses, and matching methods, we find the shock changed the way people vote in the affected areas, with the demutualizations being followed by a 1.7–2.7-percentage-point increase in right-of-center vote share. Analyses of demutualizations that did not involve public listing of shares suggest that explanations based on wealth, liquidity, and tax-related incentives do not drive the results, and that the ownership of publicly listed shares was instrumental in generating the increase in conservative voting. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance.