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Journal of Corporate Finance Vol. 67 2021

The consequences of political donations for IPO premium and performance

Dimitrios Gounopoulos1; Khelifa Mazouz2; Geoffrey Wood3

1 University of Bath · 2 Cardiff University · 3 Western University

open access

Abstract

This study explores the effect of directors' political contributions on IPOs' valuation and firm survival. We find that individual contributions by directors bring significant benefits to the IPO firms. Specifically, we show that political contributions of board members, particularly those of CEOs and founders, increase the IPO premium and the survivability of IPO firms. We find that the relationship between directors' political contributions and IPO premium is particularly strong among non-venture-backed firms, while the link between directors' political contributions and firm survival is more pronounced for venture-backed firms with strong corporate governance. Our findings are robust to endogeneity concerns and to alternative measures of political donations and IPO performance. Our results confirm the relevance of signaling and resource dependence theories.

DOI
10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2021.101888
Volume
67
Pages
101888
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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