The authors thank Victoria Ivashina (the editor) and two anonymous referees for their suggestions and constructive criticism that helped us improve the paper. Our paper also benefited from valuable comments from Hami Amiraslani, Chiyoung Cheong, Daniel Ferreira, Beatriz Garcia Osma, Andrew Karolyi, Loius Nguyen, and seminar participants at 2019 Australasian Finance and Banking Conference, 2020 Annual Conference on Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, University of Bristol, and University of Glasgow. Denise R. Barber, at the National Institute on Money in State Politics, kindly provided help with the data on state election campaign contributions. An earlier version of this paper was circulated under the title “Political Uncertainty and Private Debt Contracting: Evidence from U.S. Gubernatorial Elections.”
