@article{2366aaa49d534102960b30c4dc82cd97,
title = "Stock ownership and political behavior: Evidence from demutualizations",
abstract = "Asetting in which customer-owned mutual companies converted to publicly listed firms created a plausibly exogenous increase in stock ownership. We use this shock to identify the effect of ownership of publicly listed shares on political behavior. Using instrumental variable regressions, difference-in-differences analyses, and matching methods, we find the shock changed the way people vote in the affected areas, with the demutualizations being followed by a 1.7-2.7-percentage-point increase in right-of-center vote share. Analyses of demutualizations that did not involve public listing of shares suggest that explanations based on wealth, liquidity, and tax-related incentives do not drive the results, and that the ownership of publicly listed shares was instrumental in generating the increase in conservative voting.",
keywords = "Attention, Identity, Political Behavior, Salience, Stock Ownership",
author = "Markku Kaustia and Samuli Kn{\"u}pfer and Sami Torstila",
note = "Funding Information: The authors are grateful to two referees, the associate editor, and Gustavo Manso (the department editor) for detailed comments and suggestions. The authors also thank Reena Aggarwal, Stefano DellaVigna, Brandon Julio, Jeremy Page, Christopher Parsons, Matti Sarvim?ki, Henri Servaes, Paolo Volpin, Ernst-Ludwig von Thadden, Jeffrey Wurgler; conference participants at the Western Finance Association 2012 meeting, the Florida State University SunTrust Beach Conference 2012, the American Political Science Association 2013 meeting; as well as seminar participants at Aalto University, Goethe University Frankfurt (House of Finance), Norwegian School of Economics, Oxford University, and University of Amsterdam. Parts of this work were completed while M. Kaustia was at Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, and S. Torstila was at Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. The authors acknowledge financial support from the Academy of Finland. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright}2016 INFORMS.",
year = "2016",
month = apr,
doi = "10.1287/mnsc.2014.2135",
language = "English",
volume = "62",
pages = "945--963",
journal = "Management Science",
issn = "0025-1909",
publisher = "Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)",
number = "4",
}