Chen Y.-S.Shen C.-H.Lin C.-Y.2019-07-242019-07-24201409208550https://scholars.lib.ntu.edu.tw/handle/123456789/414651This paper investigates whether political connections improve the access of firms to financing. We propose three hypotheses to prove that political benefits exist. First, do politically connected firms obtain preferential treatment for bank loans? Second, if these firms do obtain preferential treatment, do they benefit from government-owned banks (GOBs) more than from privately owned banks? Third, is the preferential treatment from GOBs enhanced during presidential election years? We examine these three questions by using detailed data on political connections and 69,332 individual bank-loan contracts for listed firms in Taiwan from 1991 to 2008. The empirical results generally support our hypotheses. ? 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York.Bank-loan contractsGovernment-owned bankPolitical connectionsPresidential electionjournal article10.1007/s10693-013-0167-12-s2.0-84899649038https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84899649038&doi=10.1007%2fs10693-013-0167-1&partnerID=40&md5=94ead510fb627200a8d57d64acaaed9f