Table 6. Mechanism: Legislature Approval
The table presents treatment effect estimates of legalizing direct campaign contributions on total contributions (Model 1), contributions to political parties (Model 2), contributions to all candidates (Model 3), contributions to senate candidates (Model 4), and authorized ROE. Legal is an indicator variable equal to one if the state allows corporate contributions to either candidates or political parties. POST is an indicator variable equal to one in the years following the PUHCA’s 2005 repeal. LegislatureApproval is an indicator variable equal to one if the state requires legislature approval for PUC commissioners. All models are estimated by altering equation 2 by fully interacting LegislatureApproval, Legal, and POST. All models include state (ST), year, and holding company fixed effects. Controls include senate, house, PUC and governor party control, citizen and institution ideology, CAPM beta, state-level unemployment rates, change in per capita income, and share of manufacturing and utility jobs. I further control for relevant election years in Models 1–4. Standard errors are clustered by state. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.
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