This paper measures how workplaces shape employees' political donations by linking individual donor records and corporate PAC activity across 12,737 U.S. public companies from 2003 to 2018.

📊 Linked Donation Records From Public Firms (2003–2018)

• Uses matched data on employee donations and employer PAC giving for 12,737 U.S. public companies between 2003 and 2018.
• Documents that 16.7% of employee donations go to candidates supported by their employer's PAC.

🧭 Tracking Co-Donation Patterns Within Firm–Legislator Pairs Over Time

• Follows firm–legislator pairs longitudinally to observe how employee and PAC donations evolve together.
• Distinguishes donations from rank-and-file employees and from executives to compare behavior across occupational status.

🔑 Key Findings

• Both rank-and-file employees and executives give larger dollar amounts to politicians supported by their company PACs.
• Alignment between firm PAC support and employee giving is stronger for politicians who are powerful and ideologically moderate and who hold high value for the employer.
• Overall, 16.7% of employee donations go to employer-PAC-supported candidates, indicating a meaningful overlap between corporate and employee giving.

⚖️ Quasi-Experimental Test: Swift PAC Shifts and Employee Giving

• A difference-in-differences design examines rapid changes in the partisan orientation of corporate PAC donations.
• Results show modest changes in the partisan composition of employee donations following these swift PAC shifts, providing a causal test of responsiveness.

💡 Why It Matters

• The pattern of co-donation and the quasi-experimental evidence point toward investment-related motives—employees appear to align with PAC-supported politicians when those politicians offer value to the firm—rather than purely ideological drivers.
• Findings underscore the role of corporations in shaping the flow of money in U.S. politics and illuminate how workplace contexts influence individual political behavior.