Campaign Contributions and Credit: Evidence from Brazil

Advisor: Claudio Ferraz

In this paper, I study the relationship between allocation of credit and political campaign contribution. In order to achieve this goal, I use loan data on indirect operations from Brazilian development bank (BNDES) at the firm level between 2003 and 2014. Exploring variation for the same firm contributing and not contributing to political campaign and for type of bank, I test if firms that contribute to political campaign at the federal level have preferential access to credit through firm-bank, firm-time and bank-time fixed effect. I find that politically connected firms increase their likelihood of receiving a loan from state-owned banks. On the other hand, they have a lower probability of receiving a loan from private banks. Results for intensive margin show that companies connected with politicians at the federal level receive, on average, greater credit from federal banks. In addition, these companies borrow lower amounts from private banks. This effect is concentrated on the credit line used to fund machine and equipment. Heterogeneous effects of connections with winning and losing candidates vary according to the econometric model I use.