We study if U.S. members of Congress who experienced an economic recession during early adulthood vote differently on redistribution-specific bills. We find that politicians who experienced a recession hold more conservative positions on redistribution, even compared to members of the same party. In light of recent empirical evidence showing that voters become more supportive of redistribution following a recession, our findings suggest that macroeconomic shocks might have a polarizing effect: recessions can create an ideological wedge between voters and their future representatives. We hypothesize and present evidence suggesting that this wedge might be explained by politicians' more privileged background.

I show that U.S. corporate elites use contributions to political campaigns as a tool of political influence by leveraging a new panel on the contributions to members of U.S. Congress (MCs) from 401,557 corporate leaders of 14,807 U.S. corporations over 1999-2018. Donations increase by 11% when a politician is assigned to a committee dealing with policy issues relevant to a corporate leader's company. The effect is driven by donations to MCs with the greatest power in the committees. I estimate that, absent an influence motive, donations from corporate leaders during this period would have been lower by $20 million.