Ownership and the Value of Political Connections

Research has found that political connectedness can have both positive and negative effects on firm value. To resolve these mixed findings, we investigate the impact of political ties conditional on ownership for a sample of Chinese firms over the period 1999 to 2006. We find that private firms with politically connected managers have a higher value and obtain more government subsidies than those without connected managers, whereas local state-owned enterprises with connected managers have a lower value and employ more surplus labor than those without connected managers. Our results indicate that the effect of political ties is subject to firm ownership.