We study how connections to German federal parliamentarians affect firm dynamics by constructing a novel dataset linking politicians and election candidates to the universe of firms. To identify the causal effect of access to political power, we exploit (i) new appointments to the company...

This Brief studies patterns of political engagement among private firms in the European Union (EU). Using representative data, allowing for analysis at the level of NUTS2 regional groupings (EU regions varying from about 800,000 to 3 million inhabitants), various patterns of engagement emerge....