SCCEI Seminar Series (Fall 2025)

Friday, November 21, 2025 | 12:00 pm -1:20 pm Pacific Time
Goldman Room E409, Encina Hall, 616 Jane Stanford Way

Public Displays of Alignment: Firm Speech in Autocratic Regimes

Political speech by firms is increasingly common around the world. The research examines the government as an important, yet understudied, audience for such speech, focusing on how Chinese firms rhetorically align with the state. We construct a new measure of firms’ rhetorical alignment with the ruling regime and implement it in China, where such behavior is widespread. To interpret the function of rhetorical alignment, we develop a model that nests three common explanations —cheap talk, benefit-seeking, and insurance commitment— and derive testable predictions. Using the new measure, we show that aligned firms’ stock returns fall more when regime reputation deteriorates; alignment rises after regulatory investigations that heighten expropriation risk; and alignment correlates negatively with profitability but positively with performance on political objectives. These patterns are difficult to reconcile with cheap talk or benefit-seeking alone and point to insurance-commitment as a central motive for this form of political speech.

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About the Speaker 
 

Jaya Wen is an Assistant Professor in the Business, Government and the International Economy Unit at Harvard Business School. ​Her research focuses on issues in development economics, political economy, and firm behavior. 

She serves as the Director of Research for the China Econ Lab and a faculty co-chair of the China and the Global Economy Initiative. Wen is also an affiliate of the Center for International Development and the Weatherhead Research Cluster on Business and Government. 

Questions? Contact Xinmin Zhao at xinminzhao@stanford.edu