Political Investing: The Common Stock Investments of Members of Congress 2004-2007 Andrew Eggers – Harvard University Jens Hainmueller – Harvard University July 16, 2010 We examine an extensive, newly-collected dataset of the investment portfolios of members of Congress between 2004 and 2007 in order to assess the extent to which political factors are reflected in members’ investment behavior. In con- trast to the sole earlier study of Congressional investing, we find that members’ portfolios on average do not outperform the market. However, we find higher re- turns among members with leadership positions on committees, members with seats on more influential committees, and members who have been consistently identified as corrupt by a watchdog group. We also find that members tend to invest disproportionately in companies in their own states and Congressional districts, companies that contribute to their election campaigns through PACs, and companies that lobby on bills referred to their committees. These connec- tions appear to matter: a portfolio that mirrors the investments members make in companies from their own states outperforms the market by about 4% annu- ally, while a portfolio that mirrors investments members make in contributors underperforms the market by about 4% annually. (A portfolio that mirrors the investments members make in companies that lobby bills in their committees underperforms the market by almost as much.) Together, our results suggest that politician-investors enjoy informational advantages in investing in con- stituent firms, but that they sacrifice financial gains to signal policy positions and cement political deals with contributors and lobbying-oriented companies. Andrew Eggers, PhD Candidate, Department of Government, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. Email: [email protected]. Jens Hainmueller, PhD Candidate, Department of Government, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. E-mail: [email protected]. Authors are listed in alphabetical order and contributed equally. Both authors are affiliated with Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS), who generously provided funding for this project. We thank Ryan Bubb, Justin Grimmer, Gary King, Gabe Lenz, Ken Shepsle, Alberto Tomba, Jim Snyder, and seminar participants at Harvard and MIT for helpful comments. We would especially like to thank the Center for Responsive Politics for sharing data. The usual disclaimer applies.
40
Embed
Political Investing: The Common Stock Investments …svn.assembla.com/svn/timing/draft/st_v9.pdfPolitical Investing: The Common Stock Investments of Members of Congress 2004-2007 Andrew
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
Political Investing: The Common Stock
Investments of Members of Congress 2004-2007
Andrew Eggers – Harvard UniversityJens Hainmueller – Harvard University
July 16, 2010
We examine an extensive, newly-collected dataset of the investment portfoliosof members of Congress between 2004 and 2007 in order to assess the extent towhich political factors are reflected in members’ investment behavior. In con-trast to the sole earlier study of Congressional investing, we find that members’portfolios on average do not outperform the market. However, we find higher re-turns among members with leadership positions on committees, members withseats on more influential committees, and members who have been consistentlyidentified as corrupt by a watchdog group. We also find that members tend toinvest disproportionately in companies in their own states and Congressionaldistricts, companies that contribute to their election campaigns through PACs,and companies that lobby on bills referred to their committees. These connec-tions appear to matter: a portfolio that mirrors the investments members makein companies from their own states outperforms the market by about 4% annu-ally, while a portfolio that mirrors investments members make in contributorsunderperforms the market by about 4% annually. (A portfolio that mirrors theinvestments members make in companies that lobby bills in their committeesunderperforms the market by almost as much.) Together, our results suggestthat politician-investors enjoy informational advantages in investing in con-stituent firms, but that they sacrifice financial gains to signal policy positionsand cement political deals with contributors and lobbying-oriented companies.
Andrew Eggers, PhD Candidate, Department of Government, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA02138. Email: [email protected]. Jens Hainmueller, PhD Candidate, Department of Government,1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. E-mail: [email protected]. Authors are listedin alphabetical order and contributed equally. Both authors are affiliated with Harvard’s Institute forQuantitative Social Science (IQSS), who generously provided funding for this project.
We thank Ryan Bubb, Justin Grimmer, Gary King, Gabe Lenz, Ken Shepsle, Alberto Tomba, JimSnyder, and seminar participants at Harvard and MIT for helpful comments.
We would especially like to thank the Center for Responsive Politics for sharing data. The usualdisclaimer applies.
I. Introduction
Research in empirical finance tells us that average investors do poorly relative to the market
(Barber & Odean 2000) and even professional investors fail to systematically earn excess
returns (Carhart 1997). In this paper, we examine the portfolio choices and investment
returns of members of Congress, a class of investors whose political roles put them in an in-
formationally privileged position but also impose unusual constraints on their investments.
In contrast to a previous paper analyzing Congressional investments using older and less
complete data (Ziobrowski et al. 2004), we do not find that members of Congress on av-
erage beat the market in the period 2004-2007. We do however find intriguing differences
in returns across members and types of investments, which, combined with evidence that
members tend to overweight local companies and campaign supporters in their portfolios,
improves our understanding of how politicians trade off conflicting financial and political
incentives while in office.
Why study the investments of members of Congress? Leaving aside the considerable
public interest in the question of whether legislators personally benefit from their political
positions (in violation of ethics rules), the investment choices and performance of members
of Congress may provide political scientists with valuable indirect evidence about the way
firms and legislators interact. Like all investors, members of Congress presumably invest in
stocks in order to preserve and increase their wealth. But members of Congress differ from
other investors in two principal ways that guide our investigation. First, they may possess
unusually valuable market-relevant information about public companies and the regulations
that affect them. Second, their political success depends to some extent on soliciting
political support and campaign contributions from corporations and their stakeholders, and
their investments (which after all are public) may play a role in establishing connections
with public companies. In short, the investment choices and investment performance of
members of Congress provide valuable clues about what kind of informational advantages
members may possess and how they use those advantages, as well as whether and in what
ways they use their investments to cement political relationships with firms and their
1
stakeholders.
Our findings indicate that members of Congress do not on average outperform market in-
dices, in contrast to the sole previous study of Congressional stock investments (Ziobrowski
et al. 2004). But members appear to invest in a way that reflects political considerations,
strongly overweighting local firms, firms that give campaign contributions, and firms with
business before the member’s own committees. The performance of these connected port-
folios also diverges from market benchmarks: members’ local investments outperform the
market by about 4% a year, indicating substantial informational advantages from proxim-
ity and relationships with supporters, while their investments in contributing companies
underperform the market by about the same amount, suggesting that members invest in
contributors in part to cement political relationships.
II. Preliminary Discussion: What is Political about Politicians’Investments?
Despite evidence that both amateur and professional investors do not systematically beat
market indices, recent research in political economy provides substantial reason to believe
that members of Congress could be extraordinarily good investors. A substantial and
growing list of papers show that firm values are very sensitive to political factors:
• Roberts (1990) finds that the death of the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed
Service Committee resulted in lower stock value of firms located in the Senator’s state
and higher stock values of firms connected to the Senator who inherited his position
on the committee.
• Jayachandran (2006) finds that the market value of Republican-connected firms dropped
when Senator Jeffords unexpectedly departed the Republican Party in 2001, shifting
the Senate majority to the Democrats.
• Goldman et al. (2008a) and Goldman et al. (2008b) show that companies that an-
nounce the appointment of a politically-connected director experience a positive ab-
normal return and that politically connected firms are more likely to secure procure-
2
ment contracts.
Comparable evidence abounds for other countries as well (Fisman 2001, Johnson & Mitton
by all of these studies is that politicians can significantly impact firm values. Presumably,
politicians know about the impact of their own actions and those of other politicians with
whom they work. If these studies do not greatly overstate the impact of politicians on
stock prices, an investment-minded member of Congress could handsomely profit from
information arbitrage.
Politicians may enjoy additional informational advantages simply by being in close
contact with corporate executives and industry lobbyists as part of their legislating and
fundraising routines. Recent research in empirical finance suggests that mutual fund man-
agers do better when they invest in companies to which they are connected through geo-
graphic proximity (Coval & Moskowitz 2001)1 or personal ties to executives (Cohen et al.
2008). Members of Congress necessarily have large personal networks and frequent con-
tact with corporate executives and lobbyists. Whether the firm approaches the legislator
asking for policy favors or the legislator approaches the firm asking for campaign dona-
tions, the firm may reveal information about its market prospects (either intentionally or
unintentionally) that the legislator could act on in her own investments.
While members of Congress likely enjoy considerable information advantages because
of their political power, they also face a number of constraints arising from their need to
appeal to political constituents. We focus on three such constraints, which we will refer to
as “signaling,” “bonding,” and “ethics.”
Signaling
Members’ investments are public (which is why this paper is possible) and occasionally
subject to journalistic scrutiny (e.g., Boller (1995)). To voters, firms, and other politicians,
a member’s stock holdings may convey a signal about the member’s policy preferences
1Although not in recent years; see below.
3
or ideology. Suppose politicians agree on the expected return of a particular tobacco
company’s stock but differ in their opposition to tobacco companies: some are pro-tobacco
and some are anti-tobacco. Anti-tobacco types experience a higher private cost of owning
tobacco stock, perhaps because of the cognitive dissonance of having a financial stake in
a company they dislike. Suppose that there is also a group of constituents who oppose
the tobacco industry and want to elect an anti-tobacco politician. If the private cost to
anti-tobacco politicians of owning tobacco stock is high enough, there may be a separating
equilibrium where only pro-tobacco politicians choose to own the stock and the anti-tobacco
constituents vote for politicians who refuse to own tobacco stock.2
In addition to signaling political ideology, investments might be thought to signal prefer-
ences about public service versus private gain: by abstaining from using political knowledge
to bank windfall profits, politicians may signal to voters that they prioritize public service.
Consistent with the idea that members constrain themselves in order to send a signal to
voters, Ziobrowski et al. (2004) find smaller abnormal returns in 1996 and 1997, which they
suggest may be due to the unfavorable media attention drawn to well-timed stocks trades
among members by Boller (1995).
To the extent that signaling is indeed a significant determinant of members’ investment
portfolios, we might expect average returns to be modest, since basic portfolio theory tells
us that restricting possible investments (particularly based on non-financial considerations)
cannot enhance returns.
Bonding
The second political constraint on members’ investment decisions also comes from their
relationship with voters and constituent firms. As is widely discussed in the political econ-
omy literature, politicians face a commitment problem with respect to voters and potential
campaign donors. Suppose that a firm is considering offering a campaign contribution to a
politician, but is unsure of whether the politician will pursue its interests in the legislature.
2In terms of Spence’s educational signaling model, the constituents are the employers, the politiciansare the workers, not buying stock is the costly credential, and the anti-tobacco politicians are the highability types for whom the credential is less costly.
4
This is clearly an incomplete contracting situation: it is impossible to write down all of
the ways in which the politician could serve or not serve the firm’s interests, and at any
rate courts would not enforce such a quid pro quo. The firm may then find it beneficial to
require the politician to take an equity stake in the company, bringing the firm’s and the
politician’s policy interests into closer alignment.3 In short, members may take on equity
in constituent companies in order to make policy promises credible. If the politician is
able to influence policy to help the firm in a way the market did not anticipate, we might
expect these investments to be profitable; in an inefficient market, though, there can be no
such expectation: since the politician engages in the informal contract principally to earn
political returns, it may be that the ex ante financial returns are nonexistent or negative.
Ethics
The final political constraint is ethics regulation. Members of Congress face no special
restrictions on their investment choices (other than the requirement to file annual disclo-
sures), but ethics rules state broadly that members should not financially profit from their
political positions (Code of Conduct, 2005). A member of Congress who invested very
aggressively might face ethics charges in addition to journalistic scrutiny (Boller 1995).
III. Related literature
The empirical literature examining the investments of members of Congress consists of
one published paper and one working paper. Ziobrowski et al. (2004) uses transactions
reported in the 1990s to demonstrate that Senators experienced large abnormal returns.
As an indication of the uncanny timing exhibited by Senators in the period they consider,
stocks sold by Senators outperformed the market by 25 percent during the 12 months
prior to the sell date and remained fairly flat thereafter, while stocks that they purchased
beat the market by only 3 percent prior to the buying date, but by almost 28 percent in
3It is standard for corporate directors to be required to own large equity stakes in the companies onwhose boards they serve in order to reduce slack in the shareholder/director relationship. Directors areusually contractually required to hold the stock, which brings us back to the commitment problem here:it may not be time consistent for the politician to continue holding the company’s stock once the firm’scheck has been cashed.
5
the year following the transaction. In subgroup analysis they fail to find a difference in
the returns of Democrats and Republicans, and if anything junior Senators appear to be
smarter traders. Intriguingly, they find smaller abnormal returns in 1996 and 1997, which
they suggest may be due to the unfavorable media attention drawn to well-timed stocks
trades among members by Boller (1995). The Ziobrowski et al paper generated attention
in the media4 and in Congress itself.5
Consistent with the idea that members face considerable constraints that offset their
informational advantages, Lenz (2009) finds that members of Congress did not experience
any abnormal wealth gains between 1995 and 2005 compared to similar subjects in the
Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). The finding extends to stock holdings as well.
A large literature in empirical finance examines the investment behavior and perfor-
mance of other groups of investors, providing useful benchmarks and techniques. Barber
& Odean (2000) study the stock portfolios of over 65,000 retail investors between 1991
and 1996, using data from a discount brokerage. They find that individual investors on
average underperform the market (earning annual returns of 16.4 percent in a period when
the market returned 17.9 percent annually), and that more active traders did significantly
worse, largely due to trading fees.
Towards the other extreme of investor sophistication, Jeng et al. (2003) examine trades
reported by corporate executives (who are required by insider trading rules to report sales
and purchases they make of their own company stock). As did Ziobrowski et al. (2004),
Jeng et al. evaluate the timing of insider trades by creating portfolios based on the reported
trades: a “buy” portfolio that reflects the stocks purchased by insiders and a “sell” portfolio
that reflects the stocks sold by insiders. They find that the sell portfolio does just as well
4The study was cited on the New Yorker ’s “Financial Page” of October 31, 2005; it was describedin a Washington Spectator article on January 1, 2006, “An Ethics Quagmire: Senators Beat the StockMarket—and Get Rich—With Insider Information”; and it was featured on “Nieman Watchdog – Questionsthe press should ask” on March 10, 2006.
5The “Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge” (STOCK) Act was introduced in 2006 as H.R. 5015by Reps Slaughter and Baird and reintroduced in 2007 (by the same members) as H.R. 2341. The billproposed to prohibit members of Congress, congressional staffers, and members of the executive branchfrom trading on “material non-public information,” defined as information members acquire as a resultof their employment by the federal government. For more on policy issues surrounding stock trading bymembers of Congress, see George (2008).
6
as the market but that the buy portfolio beats the market by more than 6% per year, a
handsome return for any fund manager.
Cohen et al. (2008) examine the portfolio choices of mutual fund managers in the context
of their social connections with the managers of public companies. They find that portfolio
managers tend to invest more intensively in companies to which they are connected by
educational ties (e.g., the portfolio manager attended the same business school at the
same time as the CEO) and that these “connected” investments perform better than non-
connected investments.6 They further show that returns are concentrated around news
announcements by portfolio companies, suggesting that social ties allow connected portfolio
managers to obtain market-relevant news from company executives in advance of other
investors. Intriguingly, they find that returns are higher the closer the connection is: on
average portfolio managers do better when they invest in companies whose CEO attended
the same university at the same time they did, for example, than when the CEO attended
the same school at a different time. They interpret their findings as evidence that valuable
market information travels through social networks.
Coval & Moskowitz (1999, 2001) also examine portfolio choices and performance by
mutual fund managers. The principal finding of Coval & Moskowitz (1999) is that mutual
fund managers prefer to invest in companies that are headquartered closer to their homes.
The authors calculate the distance from each fund manager to the top holdings in that
manager’s portfolio (weighted by the size of the holdings) and the distance from the fund
manager to the entire market (weighted by market capitalization of the companies), and
find that fund managers are about 180 kilometers closer to their portfolios than they
are to the market, indicating a substantial “domestic home bias.” In their 2001 paper,
6They find that managers place a disproportionate weight on connected companies conditional on in-vesting in those companies; unconditionally, they tend to underweight connected companies. In otherwords, the portfolio weight a fund manager assigns to a particular company, conditional on holding it, ishigher if the manager and firm management are connected, but connected companies as a group have asmaller share of fund managers’ portfolios than their market capitalization would suggest. The combina-tion of conditionally high but unconditionally low portfolio weights might make sense if fund managersare choosing carefully among the connected companies: they perform well on connected companies bothby choosing some companies to hold and others to avoid. Still, Cohen et al. are unable to explain whyfund managers would choose not to hold a larger stake in connected companies if they beat the market sohandily on this sub-portfolio.
7
they show that fund managers on average exhibit a modest bias toward the stocks of
local (defined as headquartered within 100 kilometers) companies, with the average fund
manager investing a little under 7% of her assets locally, even though only 6.16% of the
market is located within her local area. Consistent with Cohen et al. (2008), they find
that mutual fund managers enjoy a modest information advantage with respect to local
companies: between 1975 and 1984, the local component of their portfolios outperformed
the nonlocal component by about 2% per year. They find no evidence, however, that
fund managers’ local portfolios outperformed the market after 1985. Examining brokerage
accounts in the 1991-1996 period, Zhu (2002) also finds no evidence that investors with
a stronger propensity to invest locally enjoy higher returns, and shows that investment
behavior seems more driven by familiarity (either through proximity or advertising) than
by responses to fundamental information.
IV. Data
Our study is based on the most comprehensive dataset of congressional investments yet
assembled, complemented by extensive data about connections between members and com-
panies defined by company headquarters, PAC contributions, committee jurisdictions, bill
referrals, and lobbying contracts. The core of the data consists of assets and transactions
reported in 2,235 annual Financial Disclosure Reports for 650 Congressmen who served
between 2004 and 2007.7 The FDRs contain 130,215 reported asset holdings with an ap-
proximate value of $9.2 billion and 68,346 transactions with an approximate value of about
$3 billion. The reports include assets owned by members’ spouses and dependent children,
but excludes securities held in blind trusts. Members are required to disclose the value
of their assets and transactions within broad ranges.8 For all value-based analysis we rely
7The Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) (www.opensecrets.org transcribed the reports and madethem available to us. The average number of FDRs per member is about 3.5 since not all members servefor the entire four years: 70 % have 4 reports, 12 % have 3 reports, 9 % have 2 reports, and 9 % have only1 report. There is also a very small number of missing reports.
8The ranges are $1,001-$15,000; $15,001-$50,000; $50,001-$100,000; $100,001-$250,000; $250,001-$500,000; $500,001-$1,000,000; and over $1,000,000.
8
on midpoints and cap all transactions above $1 million.9 Our analysis focuses on com-
mon stock investments, thus ignoring real estate, bonds, and mutual funds reported in the
FDRs.
For every reported asset or transaction corresponding to a public company, we matched
the name to a company in the Center for Research and Security Prices (CRSP) database and
retrieved daily quotes and company data. CRSP only covers companies that were publicly
traded on NYSE, AMEX, or NASDAQ, so this led to the exclusion of other exchanges.10
Overall we ended up with 54,003 stock holdings with an approximate value of $2.5 billion
and 45,135 stock trades (20,025 buys and 25,110 sells) worth about $1 billion in total. The
stocks cover a total of 3,132 unique companies, with about 58% listed on the NYSE, 38%
on the NASDAQ, and 3% on the AMEX. About 88% of the companies are U.S. companies.
Figure 1 shows the empirical cumulative distribution functions (CDF) of the number of
matched stock holdings and stock transactions (buys plus sells) of each member averaged
over the 2004-2007 period. The upper panel shows the CDFs for the average number of
stocks holdings and transactions; the lower panel shows the CDFs for the average value the
stocks holdings and transactions. The functions show that both holdings and transactions
are fairly concentrated. On average 24% (48%) of members report zero stock holdings
(transactions) per year. The average number of holdings (transactions) per year among
members who hold stocks is 32 (25); the median number held (traded) is 5 (0.7) per year.
The distribution of the value of the stock holdings and transactions is also skewed. Each
year, the average value of the stock holdings (transaction volume) per member is about
$1.4 million ($570,000). The median member held stocks worth of $110,000 and traded
with a volume of $12,000. Each year the 20 most active members account for about 48%
of holdings (64 % of transactions).
On average the reported stock holdings account for about 18% (median 13%) of a
9This follows Ziobrowski et al. except that they capped at $250,000.10A very small number of companies listed on those exchanges did not return quotes. Notice that we do
not consider privately held companies despite that the fact that there are several examples of links betweenprivate companies and legislators. Numerous such cases are listed in the Citizens for Responsibility andEthics in Washington’s annual reports (2005-2008) on the “Most Corrupt members of Congress.” Seehttp://www.crewsmostcorrupt.org/report.
9
member’s total reported assets and this proportion is increasing with a member’s total
assets. The annual trading volume varies widely across members. Each year the median
member trades about 13% of the value of her stock holdings, but a few members trade
a much higher proportion: Hillary Clinton, for example, has trades totaling 110% of her
holdings.
V. Portfolio Choices
A. Measures of Connectedness
We first examine portfolio choices of Members of Congress, focusing on the extent to which
Members focus their investments on local firms, firms that provide campaign donations, and
firms that are particularly affected by congressional legislation. In particular, we employ
regression analysis to investigate how the weight that a Member puts on a company in his
portfolio varies as a function of the connections he has with the firm. (See Cohen et al.
(2008) et al for another example of this kind of analysis.)
For each of the 453 Members with stock holdings we construct their portfolio weights in
basis points by computing the share of holdings of each firm relative to their total holdings
averaged over the 2004-2008 period. We include all 2, 617 firms that are held by at least
one Member in this period resulting in 1, 185, 501 possible Member-firm holdings. Together
these firms make up more than 94 % of the total market value in the entire universe of
CRSP common stocks and thus provide an accurate coverage of the universe of firms among
which Members are likely to chose their stocks allocations.
To compare allocations in stocks to which Members are connected politically, relative
to stocks to which they are not connected we define three sets of measures of “connected”
holdings. First, we classify stocks that are connected to Members through geographic
proximity. It is well known in empirical finance that mutual fund managers and individ-
ual investors prefer to invest in local stocks since investors are more familiar with local
firms (Coval & Moskowitz (1999, 2001), Zhu (2002)). For Members we expect a similar
local familiarity bias, but it may be even stronger since politicians have various additional
dealings and frequent contact with local companies that ask their representative for policy
10
favors. We define In State as a binary indicator for stocks to which a Member is connected
because the company has its headquarter in the Member’s home state.11
Second, we classify stocks that are connected because the company PACs provided
campaign donations to a Member.12 We define the binary indicator Contributions that
codes a company and member as connected if, in the period 2004 to 2008, the company’s
PAC gave any contribution to the member. To capture the increasing degree of strength of
this link we also code another binary indicator Contributions (> p50) that codes stocks of
companies whose contributions exceeded the median amount of contributions given to each
Member. Finally, Contributions Strength measures the share of a company’s contributions
as a fraction of a Member’s total contributions in basis points.
Third, we classify connections between firms and Members based on the Member’s
policy portfolio based on actual corporate lobbying. In specific, we tally up how much each
company lobbied on bills referred to each committee, and define a company as connected to
a member if the company lobbied a bill before one of the committees on which the member
sat during 2004-2008.13 We again use three measures: Lobbying is a binary indicator for
companies that did any lobbying of this sort, Lobbying (> p50) codes companies whose
lobbying exceeded the median amount of lobbying for each Member, and Lobbying Strength
measures the share of a company’s lobbying as a fraction of a Member’s total lobbying in
basis points.
11We extract the headquarter location for firms from Google Finance.12PAC contributions data comes from the FEC via watchdog.net13In this approach we thus use bill referrals rather than statutory jurisdictions to define committee policy
areas (King 1994), and we use bill lobbying rather than industrial classifications to determine which policyareas companies view as important to them. We considered an alternative coding based on a mappingbetween industries and committees based on the committees’ stated jurisdictions, extending Myers (2007)’smapping of House committees to two-digit SIC codes. (The approach of linking committees to industriesthrough jurisdictions has previously been used by Munger (1989), Endersby & Munger (1992)). However,the industry classifications are far too coarse in some instances, making many companies appear connectedto members when they are not, and in other cases clear connections are overlooked. For example, NorthropGrumman, a major defense contractor, falls under SIC code 38, “Instruments and Related Products,”along with photographic equipment companies like Kodak, Fuji, and Canon and a host of medical devicecompanies. According to Myers’ mapping, this industry comes under the jurisdiction of the armed servicescommittee, but not the defense subcommittee of the appropriations committees. The problems withusing statutory committee assignments were noted by King (1994). In our view the lobbying/bill-referralapproach gives the best representation of which members had a special role in shaping legislation thatmattered to companies.
11
Overall, about 4 % of all stocks are coded as connected by the In State metric, about
4 % of all stocks are coded as connected by the Contributions metric, and about 18 %
of all stocks are coded as connected by the Lobbying metric. Apart from the connections
outlined above, Members may choose stocks based on a number of other motivations (such
as the general popularity of certain firms, the level of diversification, etc.). Since some
of these factors may be correlated with our connection measures, we include a full set of
Member and company fixed effects into the regression to difference out these two sources of
unobserved heterogeneity. The model is therefore identified based on within-Member and
within-company variation and we can rule out the possibility that the results are driven
by unobserved factors that vary across Members and or firms.14 We cluster our standard
errors by Members in order to account for the fact that a Member’s investments may not
be independent.
B. Results
Results from the portfolio choice analysis are presented in table 1. We find a strong
political skew in the Members’ portfolio allocations. Looking at column 1, Members’ invest
an additional 15 basis points if a companies is in their home state. Compared to the
average weight of 3.8 basis points this constitutes an increase of more than 400 %, a degree
of overweighing that far exceeds previous estimates of local bias for other types of investors
(NEED CITES HERE). As another benchmark, in their study of education connections
Cohen et al. (2008) find that fund managers place an additional 8 basis points on companies
where a senior officer (CEO, CFO, or Chairman) attended the same school, with the same
degree, and at a similar time as the fund manager.15
We find that Members’ also heavily overweight companies that provide campaign con-
tributions. Compared to non-contributors, they place an additional 14 basis points in com-
panies with any PAC contributions (a 360 % increase over the mean weight). Moreover, as
column 3 and 4 suggest this premium is increasing with the strength of the contribution
14Note that the use of both fixed effects extends the approach used by Cohen et al. (2008) who includeeither firm or fund fixed effects but never both.
15Their table 2 model 8 with firm and quarter fixed effects (but not fund fixed effects).
12
connection. Members place an additional 24 basis points on companies that are among the
top 50 percent of their contributors (column 3) and a 10 basis point increase in the relative
share of contributions from a company results in a 0.5 basis point increase in the Member’s
portfolio weight (column 4).
Looking at the measures of lobbying connections, we find no bias towards firms that
lobby committees that Members sat on. The points estimate for Lobbying is almost zero
and the same is true once we narrow in on companies whose lobbying exceeds the median
amount lobbying for each Member (column 3) or use the relative measure of Lobbying
Strength (column 5).
Finally, in column 2 we consider whether the overweighing is increasing for companies
that are connected through multiple connections by including one dummy variable for each
possible combination of In State, Contributions, and Lobbying. The estimates of the con-
ditional average weights for each of the combinations are also displayed in Figure 2. The
overweighing is clearly increasing for multiple connections. Compared to unconnected com-
panies, Member’s place an additional 10 basis points in companies that are solely connected
through state, and an additional 11 basis points in companies that are solely connected
only through contributions. Companies that are both contributors and in the home state
receive a striking 76 additional basis points on average. This premium increases further to
96 basis points if, in addition, the company is also connected through committee lobbying.
This reinforcing effect of additional connections is confirmed column 5 where we interact
our continuous measures of contributions and lobbying strength with the home state indi-
cator. In both models the interaction terms enter positive and significant indicating that
the portfolio weights are increasing in contributions and lobbying to a much stronger extent
if the companies are located in a Members’ home state.
Taken together these results suggest that there is a large political bias in a Members
portfolio choice: Members place considerably larger bets in politically connected companies.
We have replicated this finding with several different measures (such as different cutpoints,
based on ranks, etc.) and the results are very robust to alternative specifications. Moreover,
13
we have also replicated the analysis conditioning only on stocks that Members actively
choose to hold. The results, which are displayed in table 2 in appendix A are very similar
to the to the unconditional overweighing. That is, even comparing only among the stocks
that Members choose to actively hold, they place much larger bets on politically connected
companies. For example, compared to an average weight of 297 basis points they place
an additional 104 basis points on home state firms and an additional 42 basis points on
firms that provide campaign contributions. The overweighing is similarly increasing in the
strength and combinations of the connections. For example, a home state companies that
also contribute receive an additional 357 basis points on average.
C. Measures of Member-Firm Connections
D. Portfolio weight regressions
As an alternative way of assessing members’ portfolio choices, A key advantage of this
approach is that it helps somewhat to disentangle the relationships among these different
connections, as e.g. many contributors are likely also local companies and/or lobby on bills
referred to a member’s committees. Note however that the question addressed is somewhat
different from the one posed above: here we examine the weight a member puts on a
company, conditional on holding it, as a function of the connections between the company
and the member. (Above, the comparison was between the total portfolio weight given to a
set of connected companies by a member and the weight given to that set by all members.)
Table 5 provides the regression results. The regression includes dummies for state
connection, contribution connection, and committee lobbying connection (our preferred
measure of policy oversight by the member of the firm16 ) as well as fixed effects for
16Although the approach of linking industries to committees based on committees’ statutory jurisdictionshas been used in many previous papers (see cites above), the industry classifications are far too coarse insome instances, making many companies appear connected to members when they are not, and in othercases clear connections are overlooked. For example, Northrop Grumman, a major defense contractor, fallsunder SIC code 38, “Instruments and Related Products,” along with photographic equipment companieslike Kodak, Fuji, and Canon and a host of medical device companies. According to Myers’ mapping, thisindustry comes under the jurisdiction of the armed services committee, but not the defense subcommitteeof the appropriations committees. The problems with using statutory committee assignments were notedby King (1994). In our view the lobbying/bill-referral approach gives the best representation of whichmembers had a special role in shaping legislation that mattered to companies.
14
member, company, and year.17 With the average portfolio weight in the sample being just
over 5%, the weight given to a connected company is a full 2 percentage points higher
if the company is in-state, and about half a percentage point higher if the company is a
contributor or lobbies bills before the member’s committees.
It may seem inconsistent that committee lobbying produces a positive bias here (con-
ditional on owning stock in the company) but no bias above (looking at the portfolio share
of connected firms). The two findings are, however, consistent with a situation in which
the choice not to hold some connected companies is balanced by the choice to take bigger
stakes in the companies the members do hold.
E. Portfolio weight regressions
As an alternative way of assessing members’ portfolio choices, we examine the weight that
a member puts on a company in his portfolio as a function of the connections he has with
the company. (See Cohen et al. (2008) et al for another example of this kind of analysis.)
A key advantage of this approach is that it helps somewhat to disentangle the relationships
among these different connections, as e.g. many contributors are likely also local companies
and/or lobby on bills referred to a member’s committees. Note however that the question
addressed is somewhat different from the one posed above: here we examine the weight
a member puts on a company, conditional on holding it, as a function of the connections
between the company and the member. (Above, the comparison was between the total
portfolio weight given to a set of connected companies by a member and the weight given
to that set by all members.)
Table 5 provides the regression results. The regression includes dummies for state
connection, contribution connection, and committee lobbying connection (our preferred
measure of policy oversight by the member of the firm18 ) as well as fixed effects for
17Because of the fixed effects, we can rule out the possibility that our results are based on e.g. correlationsbetween members’ overall level of diversification and connectedness to companies, or correlations betweencompanies’ popularity among investors generally and their amount of lobbying or political contributions.
18Although the approach of linking industries to committees based on committees’ statutory jurisdictionshas been used in many previous papers (see cites above), the industry classifications are far too coarse insome instances, making many companies appear connected to members when they are not, and in other
15
member, company, and year.19 With the average portfolio weight in the sample being just
over 5%, the weight given to a connected company is a full 2 percentage points higher
if the company is in-state, and about half a percentage point higher if the company is a
contributor or lobbies bills before the member’s committees.
It may seem inconsistent that committee lobbying produces a positive bias here (con-
ditional on owning stock in the company) but no bias above (looking at the portfolio share
of connected firms). The two findings are, however, consistent with a situation in which
the choice not to hold some connected companies is balanced by the choice to take bigger
stakes in the companies the members do hold.
F. Discussion
We view the finding that members of Congress invest disproportionately in companies to
which they are politically connected as quite striking. The bias is strongest toward local
companies; as noted above, mutual fund managers also appear to favor local companies but
apparently not to the degree that members of Congress do. The portfolio weight assigned
to contributor companies and committee-lobbying companies is smaller but suggests that
members invest almost 10% more in connected than in non-connected companies, con-
ditional on state connection and member and firm fixed effects, which is quite a sizable
difference.20
cases clear connections are overlooked. For example, Northrop Grumman, a major defense contractor, fallsunder SIC code 38, “Instruments and Related Products,” along with photographic equipment companieslike Kodak, Fuji, and Canon and a host of medical device companies. According to Myers’ mapping, thisindustry comes under the jurisdiction of the armed services committee, but not the defense subcommitteeof the appropriations committees. The problems with using statutory committee assignments were notedby King (1994). In our view the lobbying/bill-referral approach gives the best representation of whichmembers had a special role in shaping legislation that mattered to companies.
19Because of the fixed effects, we can rule out the possibility that our results are based on e.g. correlationsbetween members’ overall level of diversification and connectedness to companies, or correlations betweencompanies’ popularity among investors generally and their amount of lobbying or political contributions.
20For comparison, this bias in portfolio weights is about the same as the bias toward connected compa-nies found in Cohen et al. (2008), whose central finding is that mutual fund managers make bigger bets onconnected companies. (Connected companies there are defined based on shared educational backgroundbetween mutual fund managers and the firm’s managers). Meanwhile, the unconditional home bias esti-mates in that paper actually show a bias away from connected companies compared to the market as awhole, while here we find strong pro-connection bias by both measures.
16
The biases toward constituent and contributor companies that we observe are consistent
with the idea that members invest based on information about firms, as well as the signaling
and bonding stories: members probably know more about local and contributor companies,
and they may be particularly interested in signaling and/or aligning incentives with them.
The bias away from companies whose industries match one’s committee jurisdictions is not
consistent with the idea that members have information about regulation and invest based
on that information, but this is somewhat contradicted by a bias toward companies that
lobby bills referred to one’s committee.
In order to assess the mix of informational advantages and political considerations
that drive members’ investing behavior (and particularly their portfolio bias toward local
companies and contributors), we now turn to an examination of the returns of members’
portfolios, paying particular attention to differences in the performance of investments
made in connected and unconnected portfolios.
VI. Event Study of Timing of Transactions
We now turn to the performance of members’ investments.
A. Methodology
We use an event study approach to examine whether members have well-timed stock trans-
actions. The basic idea is to calculate, for each trading day around a transaction (e.g.
-2,-1,0,1,2) the average return for the traded stocks, and to see whether stocks on average
rose or fell before and after the member chose to sell or buy. Let t be an event-day indicator
that ranges from t = (−255,−254, ..., 255) with t = 0 denoting the day at which a member
sold or bought a particular stock. Let i = (1, ..., N) be an indicator of the traded stocks
in a particular sample. For several samples of buy and sell transactions, we compute the
cumulative abnormal return (CAR) on each event-day. First, we compute the daily average
abnormal return for the sample transactions as
ARt =
∑Ni wi(Ri,t −Rm,t)∑N
i wi
17
where Ri,t is the return from sample transaction i on the calendar day that corresponds to
event day t, Rm,t is the return on the CRSP value weighted market index, and wi is the
trade weight of transaction i. We use transaction values as our trade weights. As noted
above, we use midpoints of the ranges reported in the FDRs to obtain the transaction value
unless the exact amount is reported. The cumulative abnormal return for a given day t is
then computed as
CARt =t∑
T=−255
ARt
To make the figures more easily interpretable, we normalize each CAR series by subtracting
the value of CAR0 so that the CAR is always zero at the trading day t = 0. In addition
to the value-weighted approach for the CARs described above we also compute an equal-
member weighted CAR where the ARt is first computed for the transactions of each member
separately and then averaged across members. Intuitively, the value weighted approach
examines how the value-weighted average of all transactions performed relative to the
market, while the equal-member weighted approach examines how the transactions of the
average member performed relative to the market.
Notice that we use the CAR analysis primarily as a descriptive tool to describe the
timing and performance of the members transactions vis-a-vis the market. Further below
we provide more formal tests based on the calendar time portfolio approach.
B. Results of CAR Analysis
B.1. Overall CAR
Figure 3 shows the CAR plots for the buy and sell samples of all members (value weighted
and equal-member weighted), as well as the subsamples of only the Democratic and Repub-
lican members. Figure 4 shows the CAR plots for best and worst five selling and buying
members.
18
B.2. State Connected versus Unconnected
In this section we compare the timing of stock trades of companies headquartered in a
member’s state relative to stocks trades of companies that are not. Figure 5 shows the
CAR plots for the buy and sell samples of selected subsamples: all members, Republicans,
House Republicans, and Senate Democrats. For these subsets, members tend to have better
timed stock transactions with companies that are in their own state or district compared
to out-of-district companies. The same pattern roughly holds for many other subsamples.
Figure 6 shows similar CAR plots for four selected members. Later we conduct systematic
analysis to examine these patterns in more detail.
B.3. Contribution-Connected versus Unconnected
In this section we compare the performance of stock trades of companies which contributed
to a members financially, relative to stocks trades of companies that did not contribute.
Figure 7 shows the CAR plots for the buy and sell samples of selected subsamples: All
members, Rebulicans, House Rebulicans, and Senate Democrats. The results suggest that
members fare worse with stocks transactions of companies that contributed to the members
compared to their transactions with companies that did not contribute to them.
B.4. Committee Connected versus Unconnected
TBA
VII. Analysis of Calendar Time Portfolio Returns
A. Methodology
We use a standard calendar time portfolio approach to examine the risk adjusted returns
that members earned on their portfolios. For members h ∈ (1, ..., H) we observe their
holdings at the end of each year as well as the transactions that occurred within each year.
We use this information to construct a member’s monthly portfolios returns Rh,t for each
of t ∈ (1, ..., T ) months between January 2004 and January 2008. Let i ∈ (1, ..., Nt) be
an indicator for stocks held by member h in month t, each with a dollar amount of wi. A
19
member’s monthly portfolios return is computed as the weighted average of the monthly
returns of the portfolio’s underlying stocks, Rh,t =∑N
i=1 wh,iRi,t∑Ni=1 wi,t
. Weights are computed at
the beginning of each month; we therefore assume (as is standard) that all transactions
reported in a given month take place at the end of the month.21
We compute two kinds of portfolios, corresponding to different ways of averaging returns
across members. Value weighted calendar time portfolios Rp,t are computed by averaging
across members, weighting individual member portfolios by the members total dollar hold-
ings in that month, i.e. Rp,t =∑
h=1Hwh,tRh,t∑h=1Hwh,t
where wh,t =∑N
i=1wi,t is the total value
invested by member h in month t. This approach corresponds to an investment strategy of
investing in a portfolio that mimics dollar for dollar the aggregate Congressional portfolio.
We also compute monthly equal-member weighted calendar time portfolios by taking a
simple average across members portfolios for each calendar month, so that wh,t = 1 and
every member is weighted equally regardless of how much she invested.
To test whether members outperform the market we regress the risk-adjusted calendar
time portfolios on a standard set of controls. (This is known in empirical finance as the
“four-factor” model - a regression of an excesss return series on the monthly returns from
the three Fama & French (1993) factors and Carharts (1997) momentum factor..) The
regression yields an intercept (commonly called “alpha”) that calculates the risk-adjusted
where Rf,t is the risk-free rate of return (ie. the return on a 1-month Treasury bill),
Rm, t is the normal market return, SMBt is the size premium (small minus big), HMLt
is the value premium (high minus low), WMLt is the momentum factor (winners minus
losers).22 To compare the excess returns for connected and unconnected portfolios we also
consider a hedged portfolio in which the dependent variable is the difference between the
21Barber & Odean (2000) show that these simplifying assumptions only cause minor differences in thereturn calculations even with high portfolio turnover. In our data, the turnover rates are low so our returncalculations should only marginally be affected by ignoring the intra-month trading activity.
22We are grateful to Kenneth R. French for providing the factor data in his data library at http:
(risk free adjusted) return on the connected portfolio minus the return on the unconnected
portfolio. This mimics an investment strategy of going long in the connected and short in
the unconnected stocks.
B. Results of Portfolio Tests
B.1. All members
Table 6 shows the annualized alpha estimates for the value-weighted portfolios constructed
from all members.23 The first row shows the average excess returns for the portfolio of all
stocks. We find that the Congressional portfolio performs about as well as the market; the
excess return is an insignificant minus .4 percent. This finding stands in contrast to the
results from Ziobrowski et al. who found that in the 1990’s the stock transactions of Sen-
ators produced excess returns. Notice that in contrast to this earlier analysis, our returns
estimates are based on real portfolios and therefore approximate the actual returns.24
Rows 2-4 show the results when we split the portfolios into stocks of companies that are
located in and out of a member’s own state. We find that the in-state portfolio on average
outperforms the market by about 3.3 percent annually. The returns on the out-of-state
portfolio slightly underperformed the market. The returns on the hedged portfolio suggest
that on average the connected stocks outperform the unconnected stocks by about 4.2
percent annually. As we saw earlier, members also tend to overweight in-state companies
in their portfolios. Based on the fact that the in-state portfolio outperforms the market, this
appears to be a wise strategy, suggesting that members are not only bonding themselves
to local interests by investing locally but also picking winners.
Rows 5-7 show the results when we split the portfolios into stocks of companies that
contribute to a members’ campaign funds and stocks of companies that do not contribute.
Here a stock is coded as connected if the company is among the top 20 PAC contributors
over the period 2004-2007.25 We find that the portfolio of contribution-connected stocks
23The member-equal weighted estimates are qualitatively similar and not shown here.24Ziobrowski et al. (2004) create a buy and sell portfolio from the record of transactions by assuming
that stocks are held for a certain amount of time after the transaction.25Results for other definitions, such as the top 40 contributors or the top 1% of contributors, are quali-
tatively similar.
21
on average underperform the market by about 4 percent annually. The returns on the
unconnected portfolio is indistinguishable from the normal market return. The returns
on the hedged portfolio suggest that on average the connected stocks underperform the
unconnected stocks by about 3.6 percent annually. So despite the fact that members invest
more heavily in companies that provide campaign contributions, these investments perform
worse than those in companies that do not contribute. This is consistent with the idea that
members invest in companies in part to seal political exchanges rather than to profit from
an informational advantage.
Rows 8-10 examine the differences in returns for the committee jurisdiction connection.
We find no differences in the returns of the connected and the unconnected portfolio. As
indicated above, this may be because our definition of committee-connected companies
provides only a weak signal. If it is indeed true that members do not enjoy excess returns
in trading committee-connected stocks, it would appear that members either do not have
an informational advantage due to their regulatory power or they do not use it in investing.
Rows 11-13 examine the differences in returns for the committee lobbying connection
(ie companies that lobbied bills before a member’s committees). Here we find that the con-
nected portfolio underperforms the market by almost 2% while the unconnected portfolio
outperforms the market by about 1.3% annually. (The first point estimate has a p-value
of .07 and the second of .47.) The difference between them is about -3.3, with a p-value
of .12. Thus while the estimate is somewhat imprecise, these connected investments also
seem to underperform compared to unconnected investments, suggesting that whatever
regulation-related market knowledge they have is not translated into abnormal investment
returns.
B.2. Members
In this section we examine the distribution of alpha returns across members. We compute
annualized four-factor alphas for each of the 429 members who report at least two years of
stock holdings using the calendar time portfolio approach outlined above. Figure plots the
return estimates against the average annual value of a member’s investment. There is a
22
significant variation in members’ returns ranging from 45 % annual excess returns for John
Yarmuth (D-Ky) to -43 % for Bob Inglis (R-SC). In line with the overall portfolio results
shown above, the average returns across members is -2.9 %. The returns are roughly nor-
mally distributed. On average members who invest more earn higher returns as indicated
by the linear fit.
What else accounts for the variation in member’s returns? We regress the member’s
return on a set of explanatory variables including the member’s party, the year first elected
to Congress, a dummy for whether the member served in a leadership position (committee
chairman or ranking member), a “revolving door score” obtained from the CRSP which
consists of the number of a member’s staffers who either came to Capitol Hill after repre-
senting private interests or left the member’s staff for a lobbying position. We also include
a two dummy variables that capture allegations of unethical activities. The first dummy,
Named Corrupt 1, is coded one for those members that have once or twice between men-
tioned in the CREW’s list of the 20 Most Corrupt members of Congress over the last four
years. The second dummy, Named Corrupt 2, is coded one for those members that have
been named three or more times over the last four years. Table 7 shows regression results.26
We find that higher revolving door scores are associated with higher returns. Ten addi-
tional revolving door staffers are associated with about a 0.1 increase in the average annual
returns. Seniority is negatively correlated with returns. Members that enter Congress one
year later have 0.1 lower returns on average. Somewhat remarkably, we find that the 128
members with leadership position earn 2.5 higher annual excess returns on average. Simi-
larly, those members named more than twice on the list of corrupt members on average earn
about 4.8 higher returns. Notcie that only 4 members fall into this group, however. Finally,
we find no significant different betwee the average returns of Republican and Democratic
members.
VIII. Conclusion
TBA
26Notice that this regression ignores the estimation uncertainty in the members’ alpha returns.
23
References
Barber, B. & Odean, T. (2000), ‘Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common StockInvestment Performance of Individual Investors’, The Journal of Finance 55(2), 773–806.
Boller, G. (1995), Taking stock in congress. Published in Mother Jones, Sept Issue.
Carhart, M. (1997), ‘On persistence in mutual fund performance’, Journal of Financepp. 57–82.
Cohen, L., Frazzini, A. & Malloy, C. (2008), ‘The small world of investing: Board connec-tions and mutual fund returns’, Journal of Political Economy 116(5), 951–979.
Coval, J. & Moskowitz, T. (1999), ‘Home bias at home: Local equity preference in domesticportfolios’, Journal of Finance pp. 2045–2073.
Coval, J. & Moskowitz, T. (2001), ‘The geography of investment: Informed trading andasset prices’, Journal of Political Economy 109(4), 811–841.
Endersby, J. & Munger, M. (1992), ‘The impact of legislator attributes on union PACcampaign contributions’, Journal of Labor Research 13(1), 79–97.
Faccio, M. (2006), ‘Politically Connected Firms’, The American economic review96(1), 369–386.
Fama, E. & French, K. (1993), ‘Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds’,Journal of financial economics 33(1), 3–56.
Ferguson, T. & Voth, H. (2008), ‘Betting on Hitler-The Value of Political Connections inNazi Germany*’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 123(1), 101–137.
Fisman, R. (2001), ‘Estimating the Value of Political Connections’, American EconomicReview 91(4), 1095–1102.
George, A. (2008), ‘Public (self)-service: Illegal trading on confidential congressional infor-mation’, Harvard Law & Policy Review 2, 161–172.
Goldman, E., Rocholl, J. & So, J. (2008a), ‘Does political connectedness affect firm value?’,Review of Financial Studies forthcoming.
Goldman, E., Rocholl, J. & So, J. (2008b), ‘Political Connections and the Allocation ofProcurement Contracts’, Working Paper University of Indiana .
Jayachandran, S. (2006), ‘The Jeffords Effect*’, The Journal of Law and Economics49(2), 397–425.
Jeng, L., Metrick, A. & Zeckhauser, R. (2003), ‘Estimating the returns to insider trading: Aperformance-evaluation perspective’, Review of Economics and Statistics 85(2), 453–471.
24
Johnson, S. & Mitton, T. (2003), ‘Cronyism and capital controls: evidence from Malaysia’,Journal of Financial Economics 67(2), 351–382.
Khwaja, A. & Mian, A. (2005), ‘Do Lenders Favor Politically Connected Firms? RentProvision in an Emerging Financial Market*’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics120(4), 1371–1411.
King, D. (1994), ‘The nature of congressional committee jurisdictions’, American PoliticalScience Review pp. 48–62.
Munger, M. (1989), ‘A simple test of the thesis that committee jurisdictions shape corporatePAC contributions’, Public Choice 62(2), 181–186.
Myers, B. W. (2007), Firms, Politicians, and Capital Structure. Job Market Paper.
Roberts, B. (1990), ‘A Dead Senator Tells No Lies: Seniority and the Distribution of FederalBenefits’, American Journal of Political Science 34(1), 31–58.
Zhu, N. (2002), ‘The local bias of individual investors’, Yale ICF Working Paper No. 02-30.
Ziobrowski, A., Cheng, P., Boyd, J. & Ziobrowski, B. (2004), ‘Abnormal Returns from theCommon Stock Investments of the US Senate’, Journal of Financial and QuantitativeAnalysis 39(4), 661–676.
25
Tables
Table 1: Portfolio Weights as a Function of Member-Firm Connections
Model (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
Dependent Variable: Portfolio WeightMean: 3.82
In State 15.18 9.86 15.13 15.13 11.85(1.59) (1.36) (1.59) (1.61) (1.66)
Lobbying 0.47 0.58(0.62) (0.60)
Contributions 14.72 11.49(2.43) (4.23)
In State & Lobbying 12.82(4.25)
In State & Contributions 75.99(21.83)
Lobbying & Contributions 6.14(2.65)
In State & Contributions & Lobbying 96.18(16.35)
Lobbying (> p50) 0.90(1.22)
Contributions (> p50) 24.06(4.28)
Lobbying Strength -0.0001 -0.014(0.0274) (0.026)
Contribution Strength 0.059 0.035(0.017) (0.018)
Lobbying Strength · In State 0.55(0.24)
Contribution Strength · In State 0.085(0.053)
Members Fixed Effects x x x x xFirms Fixed Effects x x x x x
N 1,185,501 1,185,501 1,185,501 1,185,501 1,185,501
Note: Regression coefficients with standards errors (clustered by Members) in parenthesis. The dependent variable is theportfolio weight, i.e. the share of holdings of a firm in a Member’s portfolio (in basis points). Members’ portfolios arecomputed as average holdings over the 2004-2008 period. In State is a binary indicator for firms that are connected toa Member since they are located in a Member’s home state. Lobbying is a binary indicator for firms that are connectedto a Member since they lobbied a Committee on which the Member served. Contributions is a binary indicator for firmsthat are connected to a Member since they provided her with campaign contributions. Lobbying (> p50) and Contributions(> p50 ) are binary indicators for firms that provided more than the median lobbying or contribution amount for eachMember. Lobbying Strength and Contribution Strength measure a firm’s share of lobbying or contributions relative to eachMember’s total lobbying or contributions (in basis points). All regressions include a full set of Members and firms fixedeffects (coefficients not shown here).
26
Table 2: Portfolio Weights as a Function of Member-Firm Connections (Conditional onHolding)
Model (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
Dependent Variable: Portfolio WeightMean: 297.81
In State 104.6 32.49 105.3 97.56 75.40(37.3) (36.03) (36.76) (36.50) (36.38)
Lobbying 17.3 28.84(17.9) (18.19)
Contributions 42.9 70.86(21.5) (53.97)
In State & Lobbying 62.03(72.82)
In State & Contributions 357.3(177.8)
Lobbying & Contributions 40.56(27.15)
In State & Contributions & Lobbying 268.0(87.45)
Lobbying (> p50) 1.155(19.84)
Contributions (> p50 ) 54.87(29.49)
Lobbying Strength 0.018 0.035(0.028) (0.028)
Contribution Strength 0.040 0.014(0.022) (0.023)
Lobbying Strength · In State -0.12(0.09)
Contribution Strength · In State 0.11(0.05)
Members Fixed Effects x x x x xFrims Fixed Effects x x x x x
N 15,211 15,211 15,211 15,211 15,211
Note: Regression coefficients with standards errors (clustered by Members) in parenthesis. The dependent variable is theportfolio weight, i.e. the share of holdings of a firm in a Member’s portfolio (in basis points). Members’ portfolios arecomputed as average holdings over the 2004-2008 period. In State is a binary indicator for firms that are connected toa Member since they are located in a Member’s home state. Lobbying is a binary indicator for firms that are connectedto a Member since they lobbied a Committee on which the Member served. Contributions is a binary indicator for firmsthat are connected to a Member since they provided her with campaign contributions. Lobbying (> p50) and Contributions(> p50 ) are binary indicators for firms that provided more than the median lobbying or contribution amount for eachMember. Lobbying Strength and Contribution Strength measure a firm’s share of lobbying or contributions relative to eachMember’s total lobbying or contributions (in basis points). All regressions include a full set of Members and firms fixedeffects (coefficients not shown here).
27
Table 3: Top 50 members by Number of Stock Holdings
Note: si,i refers to the share of member i’s portfolio devoted to companies connected to him in the specified way(e.g. by sharing a state or by contributing money to he member through a PAC); si,i is the average of this overmembers. s+,i is the average share of members’ portfolios devoted to companies connected to member i in thespecified way; s+,i is the average of this over members. When the two numbers are the same, members on averageshow no bias for or against companies to which they are connected. Bias is calculated as described in the paper;it is roughly equal to the difference between the first two columns. The p-value is based on a permutation testthat asks whether how often a bias as large as the one observed would result if in fact there were no connectionbetween company connections and portfolio choices.
Table 5: Portfolio Weights as a Function of Member-Firm ConnectionsCoef SE P-val
State Connected 0.021 0.004 0.000Contribution Connected 0.005 0.002 0.013
Committee Lobbying Connected 0.005 0.002 0.015Note: Regression coefficients, robust standards errors, and p-values shown. N=26,085(member-asset-years). The dependent variable is the portfolio weight for a particularcompany in a member’s yearly portfolio. The regression include and full set of memberand company fixed effects (coefficients not shown here). As a benchmark, the averageportfolio weight across observations is 0.054.
29
Table 6: Annualized Excess Returns from Four-Factor Fama-French ModelsAlpha
Return SE P-ValAll Stocks -0.41 1.07 0.70
State ConnectionConnected 3.34 1.56 0.04Unconnected -0.86 1.14 0.45Connected vs. Unconnected 4.20 1.84 0.03
Committee Jurisdiction ConnectionConnected 0.00 2.53 1.00Unconnected -0.49 1.05 0.64Connected vs. Unconnected 0.49 2.48 0.84Committee Lobbying ConnectionConnected -1.98 1.07 0.07Unconnected 1.33 1.84 0.47Connected vs. Unconnected -3.30 2.06 0.12Note: Annualized alphas (ie. the annual excess returns in percent) from calendar-time portfo-lio regression with four factor Fama-French models. Standard errors and p-values are shownnext to the alpha estimates. N = 49 in all regressions. Each row represent the alphas froma separate regression for a different portfolio. The dependent variable is the return of theportfolio in a particular month. The independent variables are the normal market return, asize premium (small minus big), a value premium (high minus low), and a momentum factor(winners minus losers). All portfolios are value weighted portfolios that consist of the averagereturn across all stock held by all members and weighted by the value of the holdings. Astock is connected by state, if the company is headquartered in a member’s state. A stock isconnected by contribution if the company is among the member’s top 20 contributors.A company is connected by lobbying if the company reports lobbying expenditures for lob-bying that refers to a committee that a members serves on.Connected (unconnected) portfolios includes all connected (unconnected) stocks weightedby the value of holdings. Connected vs. unconnected is a hedged portfolio that is long inthe connected and short in the unconnected stocks. Members include all Congressmen thatserved between 2004-2007. Stocks includes all stocks traded on the NYSE, AMEX, NASDAQ.Value of holdings are reported in bands; midpoints are used for the value weights.
30
Table 7: The Correlates of member Specific Returnscoef se p-val
Revolving Door Score 0.013 0.007 0.047Year First Elected 0.102 0.066 0.125Named Corrupt 1 -0.733 2.161 0.735Named Corrupt 2 4.821 1.612 0.003Leadership Position 2.596 1.421 0.068Republican -0.318 0.937 0.734Constant -207.830 132.367 0.117Note: Regression coefficients, robust standards errors, and p-values shown. N=429.The dependent variable is each members’s four-factor annualized alpha return.
31
Figure 1: Cumulative Distribution Functions: Stock Holdings and Stock Transactions ofmembers 2004-2007
Zoe Lofgren (D−Calif)Nancy E. Boyda (D−Kan)Richard Burr (R−NC)Pat Roberts (R−Kan)Gary Miller (R−Calif)
35
Figure 5: Daily Cumulative Abnormal Returns of State Connected and Unconnected Com-mon Stocks Bought and Sold by members 2004-2007 (EW = member Equal Weighted; VW= Value Weighted)
Figure 7: Daily Cumulative Abnormal Returns of Contribution Connected and Uncon-nected Common Stocks Bought and Sold by members 2004-2007 (EW = member EqualWeighted; VW = Value Weighted)