We investigate whether U.S. House representatives and their staff seek financial information from constituent firms to inform their legislative decisions. We exploit shifts in U.S. congressional districts (i.e., the reconfiguration of federal district lines or redistricting) that introduce new constituent firms to legislators’ districts. To the extent that legislators and their staff collect and rely on firms’ financial statement information, we expect that a change in representation as a result of redistricting will result in a significant and observable change in searches for information about new constituent firms. Our evidence supports this prediction. We also find that the timing of searching coincides with legislators’ roll call votes, particularly ahead of more controversial bills and for bills lobbied by sample firms. Finally, we find that new constituent firms respond to increased information demands after a redistricting event by supplying more policy-relevant disclosures and increasing lobbying.

We examine whether broad-based public engagement by institutional investors influences the behavior of portfolio firms. We investigate this question in the context of BlackRock’s annual Dear CEO letter, which in recent years has called for portfolio firms to acknowledge and quantify the impact of environmental and regulatory factors on their firms. We find that portfolio firms’ disclosures during the post-letter period reflect topics similar to those discussed in the letters, controlling for a variety of firm and disclosure characteristics and the occurrence of private engagements. Moreover, BlackRock appears to value these additional disclosures, as it more often votes with management on shareholder proposals during subsequent annual shareholder meetings. Finally, motivated by BlackRock’s attempts to mobilize firms toward its specific policy recommendations, we also provide some evidence that firms’ lobbying efforts during the post-letter period become more aligned with the issues highlighted in the letter, especially when firms’ share BlackRock’s policy preferences ex ante. Taken together, our evidence suggests that portfolio firms are responsive to BlackRock’s public engagement efforts.