Stock ownership and political behavior: evidence from demutualizations
- A natural experiment in which customer-owned mutual companies converted to publicly listed firms created a plausibly exogenous shock to the stock market participation status of tens of thousands of people. We find the shock changed the way people vote in the affected areas, with a 10% increase in share-ownership rate being followed by a 1.3%–3.1% increase in right-of-center vote share. The institutional details and additional tests suggest that wealth, liquidity, and tax-related incentives cannot fully explain the results. A plausible explanation is that the associated increase in the salience of stock ownership causes a shift in voters’ attention.
| Author: | Markku Kaustia, Samuli Knüpfer, Sami Torstila |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-293706 |
| URL: | http://ssrn.com/abstract=2209645 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2209645 |
| Parent Title (German): | SAFE working paper series ; No. 2 |
| Series (Serial Number): | SAFE working paper (2) |
| Publisher: | Goethe-Univ., House of Finance, Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe, SAFE |
| Place of publication: | Frankfurt am Main |
| Document Type: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Year of Completion: | 2013 |
| Year of first Publication: | 2013 |
| Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
| Release Date: | 2013/04/16 |
| Tag: | attention; political behavior; salience; stock market participation |
| Issue: | Version 26. Febr. 2013 |
| Page Number: | 53 |
| HeBIS-PPN: | 337744874 |
| Institutes: | Wirtschaftswissenschaften / Wirtschaftswissenschaften |
| Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / House of Finance (HoF) | |
| Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Center for Financial Studies (CFS) | |
| Dewey Decimal Classification: | 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 33 Wirtschaft / 330 Wirtschaft |
| Sammlungen: | Universitätspublikationen |
| Licence (German): |  Deutsches Urheberrecht |
