Is Lobbying Profitable? Evidence from 29,711 meetings with the UK Government

Most studies of business access are based on legislatures and do not measure the impact on firms’ financial performance. We gather two measures of political connectedness in the UK between 2010 and 2022: 334 Non-executive directorships in the government or government agencies and 29,711 meetings between representatives of individual businesses and ministers. We model business lobbying as a system of equations with the following outcome variables: donations, advertising at the Conservative party’s annual conference, meetings, directorships, and financial performance. We find that political connectedness is associated with positive financial outcomes across six different dependent variables. NEDs have a direct effect on a company’s finances, whereas meetings are only valuable if a company’s managers hold directorships.