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Dissertation
Essays on Finance and Political Institutions
2023
Overview
The first essay finds that democratizations negatively impact asset valuations due to increased redistribution risk. Analyzing 90 countries over 200 years, risk premia during democratizations are elevated, comparable in magnitude to financial crises. Using a shift in Catholic Church doctrine supporting democracy, I establish causal evidence linking democratizations to elevated risk premia. Successful democratizations result in redistribution, public sector growth, reduced income inequality, and increased labor share of income. A model where wealthy asset market participants face redistribution risk during democratizations quantitatively explains these findings and the negligible response to autocratizations.The second essay shows that foreign lobbying shapes US government spending and public policy. Introducing a dataset of 180,000 meetings between foreign agents and US legislators from 2000 to 2018, we find that meetings correlate with legislator lawmaking effectiveness and foreign affairs committee membership. Foreign agents maintain connections with legislators even after leaving important committees. Around these meetings, foreign countries benefit from increased financial aid and favorable tariffs, while foreign firms with more lobbying gain larger subsidies and US government contracts. We observe benefits for legislators, but no evidence of constituents punishing them for meeting foreign representatives.The third essay reevaluates recent findings of increased US wealth inequality, which exclude the value of social insurance programs like Social Security. Including Social Security retirement benefits, we find no increase in top wealth shares over the last three decades, irrespective of potential tax and benefit changes. Discounting at the risk-free rate, real Social Security wealth rose from $4.9 trillion in 1989 to $52.6 trillion in 2019. Adjusting for long-run macroeconomic risk, the increase remains substantial, from over $4.0 trillion in 1989 to $41.2 trillion in 2019. By 2019, Social Security wealth represents 59% of the wealth of the bottom 90% of the wealth distribution.
Publisher
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
Subject
ISBN
9798379751166
