We examine the relation between acquirer social ties with the media and merger outcomes. We find that, consistent with the media management hypothesis, media connectedness is associated with the higher bid announcement return, lower takeover premium, poorer post-merger operating performance, greater likelihood of deal closure, and greater acquisitiveness. The association between media connections and merger announcement returns is more pronounced for stock deals. Examining the underlying channel, we show that the media networks are positively related to acquirers' media coverage and sentiment of the news articles during the pre-bid announcement period. Our findings are robust to alternative variable measurement as well as tests for endogeneity.

We investigate the influence of a previously unexamined managerial personal attribute, social capital, on a firm's propensity to smooth dividends. We document that greater managerial social capital is associated with a statistically and economically significant increase in dividend smoothing. The effect of social capital on dividend smoothing is stronger for financially constrained firms. We also find that social connections are positively associated with passive institutional ownership. Our results are robust to alternative model specifications, different variable measurement, and endogeneity tests. Overall, the findings are consistent with agency-based explanations for corporate dividend smoothing.

This study investigates the relationship between corporate political activities (CPA) and a firm's carbon emissions level. We test two competing hypotheses suggesting that political connections either incentivize firms toward stricter environmental standards through reputational pressures or enable higher emissions via regulatory leniency and compromised governance. Utilizing a large sample of U.S. firms, we find robust evidence that politically connected firms have significantly higher carbon emissions. Specifically, adding one politically connected independent director increases absolute emissions by approximately 20% and emission intensity by 16%. These results remain consistent after extensive robustness checks and addressing endogeneity through a stacked difference-in-differences design around director turnover events. We further identify regulatory leniency and weakened environmental governance as mechanisms driving these higher emissions. Cross-sectional analyses reveal that the CPA-emissions relationship is stronger in politically conservative states, financially constrained firms, competitive industries, and complex organizations, whereas institutional investors help mitigate this effect. Our findings highlight how corporate political strategies exacerbate environmental externalities, contributing to the understanding of the broader ecological and societal consequences of firms' nonmarket behaviors.