Corporate political transparency and the cost of debt

摘要

We examine the relation between borrowing firms' corporate political transparency and the cost of debt. Using a sample of S&P 500 firms over the 2012-2016 period, we document a significant negative association between firms' corporate political transparency and their cost of debt. We also find that the negative association is more pronounced when the borrowing firms are in less unionized industries and have younger executives (CEOs or board of directors). Our results are robust to a variety of sensitivity tests.