This study investigates whether a CEO's personal political ideology, as captured by his or her political contributions, is associated with a firm's credit ratings. Republican CEOs, we find, are associated with higher credit ratings, especially when their firms are headquartered in conservative areas. In addition, the link between political ideology and credit rating is more pronounced in firms that exhibit high financial distress or weak corporate governance. Changes in political ideology are associated with changes in credit rating. Our results support the behavior consistency, upper echelon, and social identity theories, as well as the risk acceptance hypothesis, and are robust to a number of alternative specifications as well as when alternate approaches and measures of credit risk are introduced. Using Republican CEOs as a proxy for conservative CEOs, our evidence implies that credit rating agencies justifiably view a CEO's political ideology and conservatism as indicative of corporate policies and, therefore, as an important determinant of the firm's credit ratings.

这项研究调查了首席执行官的个人政治思想（如其政治贡献所反映的）是否与公司的信用评级相关联。我们发现，共和党首席执行官的信用等级较高，尤其是当他们的公司总部设在保守地区时。此外，在表现出高财务压力或公司治理薄弱的公司中，政治意识形态和信用评级之间的联系更为明显。政治意识形态的变化与信用等级的变化相关。我们的结果支持行为一致性，高层，社会认同理论以及风险接受假设，并且对于许多替代规范以及引入替代风险和信用风险的衡量方法均具有较强的鲁棒性。