The Political Economy of Transnational Business-Government Connections
This large-scale project is co-authored with William Winecoff. We ask how contemporary structures of business power affect global economic and political processes and outcomes, particularly wage stagnation, rising inequality, declining competition, and slowing productivity growth in many economies. This project expands on my previous research in two respects: 1) exploring complex and heterogenous domestic business interests concerning openness to outsiders; 2) wrestling with the theoretical implications of global production structures that attenuate the distinctions between domestic and foreign actors.
We won a three-year NSF grant to generate a database of global formal political-business connections. We use the data to (1) describe the extent of political-business linkages, the potential transnationality of business-politics ties, the relationship of connections to policymaking and outcomes in the economy, and the evolution of these connections over time; (2) test hypotheses consistent with our theory of business power in which a) firms invest in connections when they are less innovative and when they operate in more concentrated and heavily-regulated industries; b) connections under such conditions lower tax expenditures and increase profitability and valuations of mergers and acquisitions; and c) countries that display high levels of political business connections are more likely to perform poorly on measures of government effectiveness and their citizens are more likely to hold negative attitudes toward political institutions.
This large-scale project is co-authored with William Winecoff. We ask how contemporary structures of business power affect global economic and political processes and outcomes, particularly wage stagnation, rising inequality, declining competition, and slowing productivity growth in many economies. This project expands on my previous research in two respects: 1) exploring complex and heterogenous domestic business interests concerning openness to outsiders; 2) wrestling with the theoretical implications of global production structures that attenuate the distinctions between domestic and foreign actors.
We won a three-year NSF grant to generate a database of global formal political-business connections. We use the data to (1) describe the extent of political-business linkages, the potential transnationality of business-politics ties, the relationship of connections to policymaking and outcomes in the economy, and the evolution of these connections over time; (2) test hypotheses consistent with our theory of business power in which a) firms invest in connections when they are less innovative and when they operate in more concentrated and heavily-regulated industries; b) connections under such conditions lower tax expenditures and increase profitability and valuations of mergers and acquisitions; and c) countries that display high levels of political business connections are more likely to perform poorly on measures of government effectiveness and their citizens are more likely to hold negative attitudes toward political institutions.