Political partisanship and stock market performance: Evidence from the United Kingdom

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School of Business | Bachelor's thesis

Date

2024

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Rahoitus

Language

en

Pages

27 + 3

Series

Abstract

This thesis examines the relationship between the political orientation of the government and stock market performance in the United Kingdom. Using monthly data from 1965 to 2023, I examine how returns and volatility differ under Labour and Conservative governments by running OLS regressions while controlling for business cycle variables. I do not find significant evidence of stock market returns exhibiting a difference in favour of one party over the other. Additionally, I find no significant difference in volatilities between the two parties for the entire sample period, though I find some evidence of volatility being higher during Labour governments for the 1994-2023 period. These findings suggest that the well-documented political premium (Santa-Clara and Valkanov, 2003) does not hold for the United Kingdom.

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Thesis advisor

Kokkonen, Joni

Keywords

politics, political cycles, partisan theory, stock market performance

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