Sarah Bauerle Danzman and William Winecoff - The Transnational Business Politics Connections Project

09/21/2020 Colloquium Series Speakers Sarah Bauerle Danzman and William Winecoff This paper introduces the Transnational Business-Politics Connections Project, a multi-year endeavor. The project collects data on the interrelationships between private business and government around the world. We match businesses and politicians when the latter ----- e.g., members of parliament and cabinet ministers -----also retain corporate board membership, a large shareholding stake, or a management position in a firm. We perform this matching process for essentially every private business, in every country in the world, for the period 2010-2020. We test hypotheses related to the value of having government connections, both in terms of firm profitability and the overall business friendliness of the policy regime. In addition, we explore corruption (real and perceived), market concentration, and the growth of economic inequality in many countries. Our preliminary findings are that business-government connections have increased substantially in many countries over the past few decades, a period of time in which market competition has declined, economic inequality has risen, and perceptions of corruption have intensified.