Political connections and the super-rich in Poland

Abstract

• There is little evidence that the Polish economy suffers from crony capitalism. • We use newly collected original panel data from 2002 to 2018. • Political connections do not increase chances of upward mobility on the rich list. • Political connections are not consistently related to the size of the largest fortunes. • They help not to move down on the list, but they increase the risk of dropping out. We study the impact of political connections of the richest Poles on their wealth level, mobility among the rich, and the risk of dropping off the rich list. We use newly collected original panel data (2002–2018) and we find that none of the variables capturing political connections of Polish multimillionaires is consistently related neither to the size of the largest fortunes in Poland nor to the chances of upward mobility on the rich list. While we find that political connections are related to a lower probability of moving down on the rich list, we also obtain that they increase the risk of falling off the list. Our results show that, contrary to some other post-socialist countries such as Russia or Ukraine, there is little evidence that the Polish economy suffers from crony capitalism.