Using U.S. Department of Justice data on state‐level political corruption, we find that banks charge higher loan spreads (all‐in‐drawn spreads) to firms in states with higher corruption and that these effects are more pronounced for firms facing financial constraints but less pronounced for firms experiencing greater external monitoring. These results are robust to additional controls, alternative corruption measures, a measure of the lack of oversight of lobbyist activities, and the use of instrumental variables. Overall, our findings are consistent with the harmful corruption environment hypothesis, which states that banks charge higher loan spreads to firms in states with greater political corruption environments as these firms are susceptible to making suboptimal financial decisions to fend off rent‐seeking behavior.

中文翻译：

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美国政治腐败和贷款定价

使用美国司法部关于州级政治腐败的数据，我们发现银行向腐败程度较高的州的公司收取更高的贷款利差（全部提取的利差），并且这些影响对于面临财务约束的公司更为明显，但较少对于经历了更多外部监控的公司而言非常重要。这些结果对于其他控制措施，替代性腐败措施，对游说活动缺乏监督的措施以及工具变量的使用是有力的。总体而言，我们的发现与有害腐败环境假说相符，该假说指出，银行向政治腐败环境更严重的州的公司收取更高的贷款利差，因为这些公司容易做出次优的财务决策来抵制寻租行为。