Betting on winner: the effect of local elections on corporate political activity outcomes

How can managers successfully access political rents by way of corporate political strategies (CPA)? Existing research has suggested several endogenous factors that correlate with CPA outcomes. I offer a more robust solution to this problem. Drawing on insights from the perspective of CPA as exchanges between firms and political decision-makers, and from the special interest politics of political economy, I develop and test a causal mechanism that links local elections, legislative bargaining and access to political rents at the national level. I conducted a natural experiment using regression discontinuity design and propensity score matching in municipal elections in Brazil to show that firms enjoy superior access to subsidized financing from the state-owned national development bank (BNDES) when they decide to invest in municipalities whose winning mayoral candidate is coalition-aligned with the national ruler. This effect fades away fades away as the level of competition in the local election decreases. The evidence implies that when managers bet on national coalition-aligned winners in close local elections, they positively affect CPA outcomes. I extend the exchange-based typology of corporate political strategies by offering a novel possibility of targeting voters with financial inducements, which I call a private local development strategy. Finally, these results show that firms exchange their project-execution capabilities for superior access to subsidized financing.

Father Dietz, the Catholic Church and the 1913 Michigan Copper Strike

Labor Historian Marc Karson has singled out “labor priest” Peter E. Dietz as one of the strongest proponents for the active implementation of the Catholic Church’s 1890’s labor encyclical Rerum Novarum in the daily practice of American Catholics. Biographer Sister Mary Harrita Fox pointed out that in his work, Dietz “was particularly concerned over the role of the church in the copper strike in Upper Michigan.” This “particular concern” should be noted since the 1913 strike was one of the only disputes where Dietz went out of his way to visit and become actively involved. Why the keen interest? This presentation will review the impetus for the huge effort which brought Peter E. Dietz to the Copper Country and solely to that dispute alone, the resulting visit and report that he made concerning the strike, the important role he believed this visit and stance in the Copper Strike had in the future of the Church’s relationship to the US labor movement. The presentation will look at both what Dietz thought would occur as a result of his 1913 trip to the Keweenaw and what actually happened in this pivotal pre-World War One era event. The paper will put Father Peter E. Dietz and the Catholic Church into the larger frame of how religion has been viewed within the history of the Strike.

Top left: Res. of Horace N. Johnson, Sec. 29, Dexter Tp. Mich. Top right: Res. of John Costell, Dexter, Mich. Bottom: St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Dexter, Michigan

Dexter, Mich. residences and church. Publication information: Chicago, Ill. : Everts & Stewart, 1874.

A select bibliography of the history of the Catholic church in the United States.

Mode of access: Internet.

The Catholic encyclopedia : an international work of reference on the constitution, doctrine, discipline, and history of the Catholic Church /

Vol. [16]: Index.

The Catholic encyclopedia; an international work of reference on the constitution, doctrine, discipline, and history of the Catholic church;

Supplements 1-2 called v. 17-18 (cataloged separately)

England and the Catholic Church under Queen Elizabeth;

"Chronological list of unpublished documents": p. [533]-543.

The Catholic church and the American Negro;

Mode of access: Internet.

The manual of the holy Catholic Church; embracing, first part: The beautiful teachings of the holy Catholic Church simplified and explained in the form of questions and answers...second part: Light from the altar; or, The true Catholic in the church of Christ...

v. 1. The beautiful teachings of the holy Catholic Church.--v. 2. Light from the altar; or, The true Catholic in the church of Christ.

The Church of England a portion of Christ's one holy Catholic Church, and a means of restoring visible unity : an eirenicon, in a letter to the author of "The Christian year" /

Mode of access: Internet.

The Catholic encyclopedia; an international work of reference on the constitution, doctrine, and history of the Catholic church;

Accompanied by "Index, vol. xvi." (ix, 928 p. illus., (ports.) 26 cm.) Published: New York, The Encyclopedia press, inc. [c1914]

A Catholic dictionary, containing some account of the doctrine, discipline, rites, ceremonies, councils, and religious orders of the Catholic church,

Mode of access: Internet.

The history of Catholic emancipation and the progress of the Catholic church in the British isles (chiefly in England) from 1771 to 1820,

"Commenced as a serial in Catholic progress, and the greater part of this first volume has already appeared in that magazine; many of the first chapters being written under the heading of 'The jubilee of emancipation'."--Pref.