Review of Financial Studies Vol. 31 No. 1 2018

The Power of the Street: Evidence from Egypt’s Arab Spring

Daron Acemoglu¹; Tarek A. Hassan²; Ahmed Tahoun³

¹ Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NBER, CEPR, and CIFAR · ² Boston University, NBER, and CEPR · ³ London Business School

Abstract

Unprecedented street protests brought down Mubarak's government and ushered in an era of competition between three rival political groups in Egypt. Using daily variation in the number of protesters, we document that more intense protests are associated with lower stock market valuations for firms connected to the group currently in power relative to non-connected firms, but have no impact on the relative valuations of firms connected to rival groups. These results suggest that street protests serve as a partial check on political rent-seeking. General discontent expressed on Twitter predicts protests but has no direct effect on valuations.

DOI

10.1093/rfs/hhx086

Volume

31

Issue

1

Pages

1-42

Language

en

Sources

openalex crossref

Cite

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