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Elisa Wirsching Best Dissertation Prize Winner Msc Political Science and Political Economy 2016-17

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Elisa Wirsching Best Dissertation Prize Winner Msc Political Science and Political Economy 2016-17 Elisa Wirsching Best Dissertation Prize Winner MSc Political Science and Political Economy 2016-17 [email protected] The Revolving Door for Political Elites: An Empirical Analysis of the Linkages between Government Officials’ Professional Background and Financial Regulation A dissertation submitted to the Department of Government, the London School of Economics and Political Science, in part completion of the requirements for the MSc in Political Science and Political Economy. August, 2017 9,917 Words MSc PSPE – GV499 MSc PSPE – GV499 Abstract Regulatory capture of public policy by financial entities, especially via the revolving door between government and financial services, has increasingly become a subject of intense public scrutiny. This paper empirically analyses the relation between public-private career crossovers of high-ranking government officials and financial policy. Using information based on curriculum vitae of more than 400 central bank governors and finance ministers from 32 OECD countries between 1973-2005, a new dataset was compiled including details on officials’ professional careers before as well as after their tenure and data on financial regulation. Time-series cross-sectional analyses show that central bank governors with past experience in the financial sector deregulate significantly more than governors without a background in finance (career socialisation hypothesis). Using linear probability regressions, the results also indicate that finance ministers, especially from left-wing parties, are more likely to be hired by financial entities in the future if they please their future employers through deregulatory policies during their time in office (career concerns hypothesis). Thus, although the revolving door effects differ between government officials, this study shows that career paths and career concerns of policy-makers should be taken into account when analysing financial policy outcomes. Keywords: Revolving door, Financial regulation, Professional background, Government officials. MSc PSPE – GV499 Table of Contents List of Tables and Figures 1 Introduction................................................................................................................. 1 2 Theoretical Framework.............................................................................................. 4 2.1 Regulatory Capture and the Revolving Door in Finance.................................... 4 2.2 Career Socialisation: Cultural Capture of Government Officials....................... 6 2.3 Career Concerns: Exchanging Future Careers for Policy Influence................... 10 3 Research Design.......................................................................................................... 14 3.1 Data on Financial Regulation and Elites’ Revolving Doors............................... 14 3.2 Methodology and Further Variables.................................................................... 19 3.2.1 Testing Career Socialisation: A Time-Series Cross-Sectional Approach 19 3.2.2 Testing Career Concerns: A Linear Probability Model.......................... 22 4 Results.......................................................................................................................... 23 4.1 Career Socialisation............................................................................................. 23 4.2 Career Concerns.................................................................................................. 27 4.3 Further Analysis: Costly Signals and Post-Government Employment............... 28 4.4 Robustness Checks.............................................................................................. 31 5 Conclusion and Discussion.......................................................................................... 33 6 References.................................................................................................................... 36 7 Appendix...................................................................................................................... 40 7.1 Analysis Appendix.............................................................................................. 40 7.2 Data Appendix.................................................................................................... 45 MSc PSPE – GV499 List of Tables 1 Professional Experience of Central Bank Governors and Finance Ministers............... 17 2 Regression Models for Career Socialisation, Main Results.......................................... 24 3 Regression Models for Career Concerns, Main Results............................................... 27 4 Further Analysis, Career Concerns and Partisanship.................................................... 29 A1 Summary statistics, Estimation Sample, CCM............................................................. 40 A2 Summary statistics, Estimation Sample, LPM.............................................................. 40 A3 Regression Models for Career Socialisation, First Policy-Maker................................. 41 A4 Regression Models for Career Concerns, First Policy-Maker....................................... 42 A5 Regression Models for Career Concerns, Conditional Logistic Regression................. 42 A6 Regression Models for Career Socialisation, Leaded Reforms (CB)........................... 43 A7 Regression Models for Career Socialisation, Leaded Reforms (FM)........................... 44 A8 Regression Models for Career Concerns, First/Last Year............................................ 44 A9 Description of Data Sources and Coding of Variables................................................. 45 A10 List of Central Bank Governors with Prior Experience in Finance.............................. 47 A11 List of Finance Ministers with Prior Experience in Finance......................................... 48 A12 List of Central Bank Governors with Future Experience in Finance............................ 49 A13 List of Finance Ministers with Future Experience in Finance...................................... 50 List of Figures 1 Professional Experience of Governors and Finance Ministers over Time.................... 18 2 Marginal Effects Plot of Financeprior for Central Bank Governors............................ 25 3 Marginal Effects Plot of Deregulation Conditional on Partisanship............................. 30 MSc PSPE – GV499 1 Introduction Regulatory capture of public policy by financial institutions has increasingly become a critical issue in many industrial economies (Baker 2010; Johnson and Kwak 2010). From Matt Taibbi’s blistering attack on Goldman Sachs, the ‘great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity’ (Taibbi 2010, para.1), to the assertion of Paul Ryan, vice-president at the watchdog group Common Cause, that ex-bankers take on jobs in government with the primary intention to repeal Dodd-Frank’s strict regulations on the financial sector (Sultan 2017), denunciation of the political involvement of the financial industry has gained new highs. Especially following the Great Recession, critics claimed that politicians, bureaucrats and regulators around the globe had ceased to serve the wider public interest and systematically favoured those special interests they were supposed to regulate (OECD 2009). The revolving door – the flow of personnel from government offices to financial entities and vice versa – is often perceived as a major driving force behind such regulatory capture. Well- known examples of influential policy-makers with experience in private finance, such as Alan Greenspan, Tim Geithner or Robert Rubin, seem to support the assumption that earlier and prospective employment in the financial sector influences high-ranking government officials in shaping financial regulation (Johnson and Kwak 2010; Gadinis 2013). Yet, systematic evidence for the relation between such public-private career linkages and public policy remains scare – a surprising fact given the policy relevance of and the public interest in this topic. Are financial sector veterans in senior government posts in fact more likely to deregulate the financial industry? And are policy-makers rewarded with lucrative future industry employment if they embark on deregulatory reforms during their time in office? To answer these questions, this study focuses on the effects of career paths and career concerns of central bank governors and finance ministers on financial regulation. While many actors and institutions shape policy outcomes in democratic systems, these senior officials 1 MSc PSPE – GV499 often dominate the political agenda and play a pivotal role in decisions about economic policy, especially in times of wide-ranging reforms (Johnson and Kwak 2010; Mishra and Reshef 2017). Hence, I expect that policy-makers with past experience in private finance carry out greater deregulatory reforms than officials without such experience because they bring social connections and socialised policy preferences with them that favour the interests of their former employers. Furthermore, I argue that government officials and financial services companies engage in implicit quid pro quo exchanges, where pro-industry policies are rewarded with later careers in the financial sector. I therefore expect that the more policy- makers please their prospective employers through deregulatory policies, the more likely they are to gain lucrative post-government employment in the industry. These hypotheses are tested using a newly created dataset on financial regulation
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