13:15 - 15:30
Friday-Panel
Chair/s:
Sam van Noort
Discussant/s:
Alexander Slaski
Meeting Room N

Jan Stuckatz
How the Workplace affects Employee Political Contributions

Gilad Hurvitz
The Meaning of Work: a Mediating Link Between Socioeconomic Status and Economic Policy Preferences

Sam van Noort, Magnus Rasmussen, Tore Wig
Does Industrialization Cause Democratization? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from the Norwegian and Swiss Industrial Revolution
How the Workplace affects Employee Political Contributions
Jan Stuckatz
Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST)

How important is one’s employer for individual decisions to donate? Despite the fundamental role of employment for individual’s livelihoods, little attention has been given to how the workplace impacts employees’ political contributions. I use donations of employees and Political Action Committees (PACs) of 12,737 public companies between 2003 and 2018 to show that 16.7 percent of employee donations go to employer-supported politicians. I investigate the dynamic relationship between employee and PAC donations within firm-politician pairs over time and find that employees contribute 17.4% more dollars to company-supported politicians. Firm-employee alignment is stronger on powerful and ideologically moderate legislators with high value for one’s employer. Results from a difference-in-differences design show that high-ranking employees even change the partisanship of their donations in line with their employer, suggesting investment-related rather than ideological motives for alignment. In sum, corporations and the workplace might be even more important in shaping political contributions than previously thought.