The Role Political Connections Play in Access to Finance: Evidence from Cross-Listing

What role does political influence play in access to finance? Using a comprehensive cross-country dataset, I characterize how and why domestic political connections affect firms’ ability to access all types of finance — exploiting firms’ cross-listing activity as a source of empirical identification. The results extend our understanding from recent single-country studies focused exclusively on domestic bank finance. First, political influence improves firms’ access to finance beyond domestic (bank) debt markets — political connections also improve access to foreign, equity finance. Second, the mechanism through which political influence works to improve access to finance is broader than political coercion of local bankers — political connections function as a firm-level substitute for strong national property rights, reducing connected firms risk premiums vis-a-vis unconnected peers.