Government contracts and US bond yield spreads: A study on costs and benefits of materialized political connections
研究美国上市公司债券数据发现，政府供应商的债务成本取决于其行业战略重要性：非战略重要供应商的利差更高，表明政治关联的治理成本超过收益；战略重要供应商则因隐性救助和收入稳定而利差更低。
Abstract In a 1991–2013 sample of bonds issued by US public firms, we find that the cost of debt (yield spread relative to comparable Treasuries) of suppliers to government agencies is contingent on the strategic importance of the supplier's industry. The yield spreads for strategically unimportant government suppliers are higher than for firms that are not government suppliers. If government contracts serve as tangible evidence of political connections, these higher yield spreads indicate that weaker corporate governance as a cost of political connections outweighs the benefits of said connections. For the subsample of government suppliers from strategically important industries, where the benefits of implicit bailout guarantees and revenue stability outweigh the corporate governance problems, the cost of debt is lower than for firms that are not government suppliers. The higher (lower) cost of debt for strategically unimportant (strategically important) suppliers is confined to contracting with the federal government. Our findings are robust to alternative variable and sample specifications, and to endogeneity concerns.