Elite CEOs: Political connections and pay in China
with Aditi Gupta and Beatriz Simon-Yarza, Corporate Governance: An International Review (2024)
Do corruption perceptions impact the pricing and access of Euro area corporates to bond markets?
with Judith Arnal, Andrés Mesa, and Antonio Moreno, The European Journal of Finance (2024)
The value of political connections: evidence from China's anti-corruption campaign
with Nuno Palma and Beatriz Simon-Yarza, Journal of Institutional Economics (2022)
Shortlisted for the 2023 Elinor Ostrom Prize
Media coverage in Bloomberg
Cross-border carbon taxes and shareholder wealth, with Martin Jacob, Gaizka Ormazabal and Robert Raney
This paper explores the effect of cross-border carbon taxes on shareholder wealth. For identification, we analyze stock price reactions to news about the introduction of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) in the EU. We find that stock prices of EU importers of CBAM products respond more negatively to the announcement of the CBAM than those of similar non-European firms. The results from cross-sectional tests support the interpretation that the documented patterns reflect EU firms’ limited ability to pass on the tax cost in commercial relations with non-EU counterparts. Collectively, our results shed doubt on the ability of cross-border carbon taxes to level the playing field between local and foreign firms.
Do CEOs’ political ideologies matter for climate disclosures?, with Walid Ben Amar and Diana Castro
This paper investigates whether CEOs' political ideologies influence their firm's narrative climate disclosures. Drawing on the Upper Echelons Theory (UET), we predict that Democratic CEOs provide more specific climate-related information than their Republican-led counterparts. We hand-collect data on CEOs' donations and build a measure of political ideology. Consistent with our prediction, firms managed by Democratic CEOs provide more specific disclosures than their Republican peers. The effect is salient in firms where CEOs have high managerial discretion. Democratic CEOs in firms facing a natural disaster (President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris agreement) increase their specific disclosures (negative tone) in their reporting. Our findings are robust to alternative measures of disclosure specificity using ClimateBert deep learning model. We also find that firms with Democratic CEOs disclose more climate-related commitments and lower carbon emissions. Taken together, our findings suggest that CEOs' political values are reflected into corporate climate change risk disclosures and translate into real effects on the management of climate risk. Our research underlines the importance of finding a consensus between politicians and corporations to close the U.S. climate divisiveness and reach the net zero objective.
China y Estados Unidos: De Taiwán a la guerra de los chips, una historia geopolítica, The Conversation (2022)