Political Activism and Firm Innovation

We hypothesize that political activism is valuable because it helps reduce political uncertainty, which, in turn, fosters firm innovation. We find that firms that support more politicians, winning politicians, politicians on congressional committees with jurisdictional authority over the firms’ industries, and politicians who join those committees innovate more. We employ a natural experiment to show a causal effect of political activism on innovation. We also show evidence of intra-industry and geographical political activism spillovers.

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Intellectual Property Protection and Firm Innovation: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in China

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.3559108 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Maobin Xu ◽

Kai Wu

Keyword(s):

Intellectual Property ◽

Natural Experiment ◽

Intellectual Property Protection ◽

Firm Innovation

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The Causal Effect of Polls on Turnout Intention: A Local Randomization Regression Discontinuity Approach

Political Analysis ◽

10.1017/pan.2020.50 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-7

Author(s):

Pablo Brugarolas ◽

Luis Miller

Keyword(s):

Political Science ◽

Natural Experiment ◽

Regression Discontinuity ◽

Time Window ◽

Causal Effect

Abstract This letter reports the results of a study that combined a unique natural experiment and a local randomization regression discontinuity approach to estimate the effect of polls on turnout intention. We found that the release of a poll increases turnout intention by 5%. This effect is robust to a number of falsification tests of predetermined covariates, placebo outcomes, and changes in the time window selected to estimate the effect. The letter discusses the advantages of the local randomization approach over the standard continuity-based design to study important cases in political science where the running variable is discrete; a method that may expand the range of empirical topics that can be analyzed using regression discontinuity methods.

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The causal effect of increased primary schooling on child mortality in Malawi: Universal primary education as a natural experiment

Social Science & Medicine ◽

10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.09.003 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 168 ◽

pp. 72-83 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Marshall Makate ◽

Clifton Makate

Keyword(s):

Child Mortality ◽

Primary Education ◽

Natural Experiment ◽

Causal Effect ◽

Universal Primary Education ◽

Primary Schooling

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Using a natural experiment to estimate the electoral consequences of terrorist attacks

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1800302115 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 115 (42) ◽

pp. 10624-10629 ◽

Cited By ~ 20

Author(s):

Laia Balcells ◽

Gerard Torrats-Espinosa

Keyword(s):

Political Behavior ◽

Police Officers ◽

Natural Experiment ◽

Causal Effect ◽

Political Engagement ◽

Terrorist Attacks ◽

Democratic Election ◽

Incumbent Party ◽

Democratic Elections ◽

The Military

This study investigates the consequences of terrorist attacks for political behavior by leveraging a natural experiment in Spain. We study eight attacks against civilians, members of the military, and police officers perpetrated between 1989 and 1997 by Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), a Basque terrorist organization that was active between 1958 and 2011. We use nationally and regionally representative surveys that were being fielded when the attacks occurred to estimate the causal effect of terrorist violence on individuals’ intent to participate in democratic elections as well as on professed support for the incumbent party. We find that both lethal and nonlethal terrorist attacks significantly increase individuals’ intent to participate in a future democratic election. The magnitude of this impact is larger when attacks are directed against civilians than when directed against members of the military or the police. We find no evidence that the attacks change support for the incumbent party. These results suggest that terrorist attacks enhance political engagement of citizens.

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