Business decisions made by the real estate industry can have a profound effect on the wellbeing of people who live, work, or shop in these buildings. While these decisions may be informed by evidence, the available evidence is often incomplete, unrepresentative or otherwise less than ideal. Therefore, the personal opinions or judgments of senior executives can have an effect. In this paper, we study these effects in two parts: risk-taking and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. Since political opinion is a relatively stable measure, which is also associated with preferences for risk and CSR, we examine how the political leanings of the CEO are related to these effects. Based on the data from 1999 to 2013, we find that Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) with Democrat-leaning CEOs tend to take more risks, as evidenced by higher levels of leverage, more capital expenditures and risky investments. We further find that politically active CEOs are more broadly engaged in different types of CSR activities. JEL Codes: D21, G32, M14, Q56

中文翻译：

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CEO 的政治倾向如何影响 REIT 的业务决策？

房地产行业做出的商业决策会对在这些建筑物中生活、工作或购物的人们的福祉产生深远影响。虽然这些决定可能会根据证据做出决定，但可用的证据通常不完整、不具代表性或不太理想。因此，高级管理人员的个人意见或判断可能会产生影响。在本文中，我们从两个部分研究这些影响：冒险和企业社会责任 (CSR) 活动。由于政治观点是一个相对稳定的衡量标准，它也与风险偏好和企业社会责任相关，因此我们研究了 CEO 的政治倾向如何与这些影响相关。根据 1999 年至 2013 年的数据，我们发现拥有民主党倾向的 CEO 的房地产投资信托基金 (REIT) 往往承担更多风险，正如更高水平的杠杆、更多的资本支出和风险投资所证明的那样。我们进一步发现，政治活跃的 CEO 更广泛地参与了不同类型的企业社会责任活动。JEL 代码：D21、G32、M14、Q56