The politics of CEOs

We find that more than 57% of CEOs are Republicans [defined by 2/3 or more campaign contributions to Republicans], 19% are Democrats…and the rest are Neutral [do not contribute 2/3 of their campaign spending to either of the two major parties].  Therefore, Republican CEOs are more than three times as Democratic CEOs.  Furthermore, Republican CEOs lead companies with almost twice the asset value of companies led by Democratic CEOs.

That is from 2000-2017, across the S&P 1500.  And:

We show that the median CEO directs 75% of his or her total contributions to Republicans.

And:

We find that companies led by Republican CEOs are less transparent to their investors on whether how, and how much they spend on politics.

The most Republican-leaning sectors are energy (89.1%), manufacturing, and chemicals.  Business equipment and telecoms are the least-leaning R to D sectors for their CEOs, though still Republican by clear margins.  In the Northeast and West the number of Democratic CEOS has almost caught up to the Republicans.  As for female CEOs, they lean Republican 34.3% to Democratic 32.3%, a small margin but still more Republican donors.

That is all from a new paper The Politics of CEOs, by Alma Cohen, Moshe Hazan, Roberto Tallarita, and David Weiss, NBER link here.

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