Corporate Political Connections and Favorable Environmental Regulatory Enforcement

The authors are thankful to Pat Akey, Adam Babich, Patrick Bolton, David Brown, Gilles Chemia, Mark Flannery, Hamed Ghoddusi, John Griffin, Joel Houston, Chris James, Ye Wendy Jin, Sehoon Kim, Tao Li, Chen Lin, Laura Xiaolei Liu (discussant), Victor Luo, Ron Masulis, Gans Narayanamoorthy, Papa Ndiaye, Ryan Peters, Xuan Ren, Jay Ritter, Alexander Rodivilov, Hongxun Ruan, Eric Set, Tao Shu, Chang Sun, Alessio Saretto, Baolian Wang, Yihui Wang, Alexander Wagner, Qi Xu, Bohui Zhang, Yu Zhang, Rui Zhong (discussant), and Morad Zekhnini for helpful discussion. They also thank the seminar audience at the 2019 China International Conference in Finance (Guangzhou), 2019 European Summer Symposium in Financial Markets (ESSFM, Gerzensee), Cass School of Business, Fordham University (Gabelli School of Business), NYU Shanghai, Peking University (Guanghua School of Management), Stevens Institute of Technology, Tsinghua PBC School of Business Green Finance and ESG Analysis Workshop, University of Florida (Warrington College of Business), and Zhejiang University for insightful comments. The authors thank Yan Li for excellent research assistance.