Raymond Fisman

About

Raymond Fisman is the Slater Family Professor in Behavioral Economics at Boston University. His office is located at 270 Bay State Road, Room 304A, Boston, MA 02215. He can be contacted via email at rfisman@bu.edu or by telephone at 617-353-6821. His profile indicates a focus on behavioral economics, and he is associated with the Department of Economics at Boston University. His CV was updated in January 2026, reflecting his ongoing academic and research activities.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Sociology
• Social Science
• Public economics
• Law
• Labour economics
• Market economy
• Political economy
• Monetary economics

Selected publications

• Tax-Exempt Lobbying: Corporate Philanthropy as a Tool for Political Influence

  American Economic Review · 2020 · 262 citations

  We explore the role of charitable giving as a means of political influence. For philanthropic foundations associated with large US corporations, we present three different identification strategies that consistently point to the use of corporate social responsibility in ways that parallel the strategic use of political action committee (PAC) spending. Our estimates imply that 6.3 percent of corporate charitable giving may be politically motivated, an amount 2.5 times larger than annual PAC contr…

  DOI

• Social Ties and the Selection of China’s Political Elite

  American Economic Review · 2020 · 192 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  We study how sharing a hometown or college connection with an incumbent member of China’s Politburo affects a candidate’s likelihood of selection as a new member. In specifications that include fixed effects to absorb quality differences across cities and colleges, we find that hometown and college connections are each associated with 5–9 percentage point reductions in selection probability. This “connections penalty” is equally strong for retiring Politburo members, arguing against quota-based…

  DOI

• Do Americans want to tax wealth? Evidence from online surveys

  Journal of Public Economics · 2020 · 85 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  DOI

• The Impact of Socioeconomic and Cultural Differences on Online Trade

  Management Science · 2023-02-16 · 14 citations

  article

  We use eBay data to investigate how within-U.S. trade is influenced by differences in socioeconomic characteristics. States’ similarity in cultural characteristics (ethnicity, religious affiliations, and political behavior) predicts online trade; cultural similarity similarly predicts trade within product categories. The culture-trade relationship is stronger for transactions with sellers who lack extensive reputations or certification, suggesting that consumers infer seller trustworthiness from…

  PublisherDOI

• Rules, Discretion, and Corruption in Procurement: Evidence from Italian Government Contracting

  Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics · 2024-08-12 · 12 citations

  article

  The benefits of bureaucratic discretion depend on its use for public benefit versus private gain. Using data on Italian firms and procurement officials investigated for corruption, we show that discretionary auctions (awarded on the basis of negotiation rather than open bidding) are linked to corruption only when competition is restricted. Corrupt officials favor these negotiated auctions, though they are used less often in administrations where at least one official is under investigation. This…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Career Success in Government Bureaucracy: Evidence from Individual-Level Data

  NSF · $415k · 2017–2021

Frequent coauthors

• Yongxiang Wang

  93 shared

• Daniel W. Elfenbein

  Washington University in St. Louis

  93 shared

• Brian McManus

  92 shared

• Silvia Vannutelli

  60 shared

• Paolo Pinotti

  57 shared

• Francesco Decarolis

  57 shared

• Pierre Azoulay

  49 shared

• Kareen Rozen

  John Brown University

  49 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  Harvard University

Similar researchers at Boston University

• Benjamin Marxh-90
• Robert G. Kingh-77
• Laurence J. Kotlikoffh-72