Political connections and firms: network dimensions
构建了一个涵盖七个经济体的政治人物、政党与企业关联网络数据集，发现网络位置和中心性等维度与企业规模和绩效相关，而传统二元分类法会低估政治关联的影响。
Abstract Business and politician interaction is commonplace. Most research has classified firms as either connected to a politician or not: a binary approach. Yet, there are almost always strong network dimensions to these connections. This article builds a unique data set to document a network of connections between politically exposed persons (PEPs), political parties, and firms in seven economies. With this novel dataset, the article examines the association between the characteristics and performance of firms and the firms’ connections with PEP, taking into account the network nature of these connections. The originality of our analysis is to identify how participation and location in a network, including the extent of links, as well as having a strategic location or centrality, is correlated with firm scale and performance. In a binary approach, such network characteristics are omitted. One consequence is that the intensity and consequences of politically connected business may be significantly mis/under-estimated.