The political polarization of U.S. firms

Executive teams in U.S. firms are becoming increasingly partisan, leading to a political polarization of corporate America. We establish this new fact using political affiliations from voter registration records for top executives of S&P 1500 firms between 2008 and 2018. The rise in partisanship is explained by both an increasing share of Republican executives and increased sorting by partisan executives into firms with like-minded individuals. Further, we find that within a given firm-year, executives whose political views do not match those of the team’s majority have a higher probability of leaving the firm. The increase in partisanship is taking place despite executive teams becoming more diverse in terms of gender and race.

That is from a new paper by Vyacheslav Fos, Elisabeth Kempf, and Margarita Tsoutsoura.

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