This study examines the effect of political lobbying on firms' short-term resource adjustment decisions. Controlling for a wide range of known determinants of managerial cost behaviour, our results suggest that U.S. lobbying firms exhibit significantly less cost stickiness than non-lobbying firms. Lobbying reduces managers' "wait-and-see games" as they obtain preferential access to information on political and legislative processes. With early knowledge of impending (political and regulatory) threats and long-lasting downturns, managers can adjust unutilised capacity more swiftly. This effect is more pronounced for firms without alternative information channels like permanent exchange with regulators. Our findings hold for several robustness checks, for instance, controlling for potential sample selection bias or employing alternative measures of lobbying as well as (political) uncertainty and alternative samples.

中文翻译：

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游说对管理层短期资源调整决策的影响


本研究探讨了政治游说对企业短期资源调整决策的影响。在控制了一系列已知的管理成本行为决定因素后，我们的结果表明，美国游说公司的成本粘性明显低于非游说公司。游说减少了管理者的“观望游戏”，因为他们可以优先获得有关政治和立法进程的信息。通过尽早了解即将发生的（政治和监管）威胁和长期的经济低迷，管理者可以更快地调整未利用的产能。对于没有其他信息渠道（例如与监管机构永久交换信息）的公司来说，这种影响更为明显。我们的研究结果适用于多项稳健性检查，例如，控制潜在的样本选择偏差或采用游说的替代措施以及（政治）不确定性和替代样本。