The (In)Visibility of Political Connections

We study the extent to which market participants are informed about firms’ political connections when the connections are not publicly disclosed and how it affects pricing efficiency. Using a sample of public announcements of government officials’ corruption investigations, we find that, on average, investors do not realize that officials under investigation are connected to firms in which they have invested and that the value of those connections has been lost. This finding suggests that the connections generally are of low visibility to investors. However, institutional investors know about at least some of the connections and abnormally sell their shares in the firms when investigations are announced. The loss of value of the connections is not fully incorporated into stock prices until the connections are subsequently disclosed, and price incorporation is slower for the connections that have been less visible to institutional investors. Our results suggest that lack of visibility significantly harms pricing efficiency of political connections.