The new culture of matching

Using detailed data on individual campaign contributions to Democrats and Republicans, our estimates show that firms are considerably more likely to announce a merger, complete a merger, and a have shorter time-to-completion when their political attitudes are closer. Furthermore, acquisition announcement returns and post-merger operating performance are significantly higher when the acquirer and the target have more similar political attitudes.

That is from a new research paper by Duchin, Farroukh, Harford, and Patel.  Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.