Résumé

Are individual political donations expression of ideology or investments in expectation of future political returns? Despite the importance of employment for individual’s livelihoods, little attention has been given to how the workplace impacts employees’ political contributions. I investigate firm-employee alignment on political candidates using donations to U.S. Members of Congress from employees and Political Action Committees (PACs) of 12,737 public companies between 2003 and 2018. Leveraging variation within firm-politician pairs over time, I find that employees contribute on average 17.4% more dollars to company-supported candidates, and align more on powerful and ideologically moderate legislators of high political value for the employer. Moreover, using a series of difference-in-differences designs, I show that high-ranking employees change the partisan composition of their donations in line with their corporate PAC, suggesting investment rather than ideological considerations. The results challenge the common perception of individual donations to be motivated by ideology.

Référence

Jan Stuckatz, « Political Alignment between Firms and Employees: Investment or Ideology? », IAST Lunch Seminar, Toulouse : IAST, 3 mars 2020, 12h45–13h45, salle Cafeteria TSE Building.