Political Connections and Firms : Network Dimensions

Bussolo, Maurizio ; Commander, Simon ; Poupakis, Stavros

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: POLITICAL PARTIES;    POLITICIANS;    BUSINESS INTERESTS;    POLITICAL NETWORKS;    POLITICALLY EXPOSED PERSONS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8428
RP-ID  :  WPS8428

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Business and politicians'interaction is pervasive but has mostly been analyzed with abinary approach, i.e. either a firm is connected to apolitician or not. Yet the network dimensions of suchconnections are ubiquitous. This paper uses use a uniquedata set for seven economies that documents politicallyexposed persons and their links to companies, politicalparties, and other individuals. The data set is used toidentify networks of connections, including their scale andcomposition. The analysis finds that all country networksare integrated having a Big Island. They also tend to bemarked by small-world properties of high clustering andshort path length. Matching the data to firm-levelinformation, the paper examines the association betweenbeing connected and firm-level attributes. The originalityof the analysis is to identify how location in a network,including the extent of ties and centrality, is correlatedwith firm scale and performance. In a binary approach, suchnetwork characteristics are omitted and the scale andeconomic impact of politically connected business may besignificantly mis/under-estimated. By comparing the resultsof the binary approach with the network approach, the paperalso assesses the biases that result from ignoring network attributes.