Someone really needs to do a meta-analysis of these results because a paper from a few years ago showed that members of congress underperform at stock picking:
Both papers could be true if congresspeople are worse than the public at picking stocks, but congressional leaders are just better than the average congressperson
It would also be interesting to compare overall stock-picking "ability“ across party lines.
Real-estate investing is another corruption vector. One way to bribe a politician is to sell them a house at a million dollar discount. The optics become that the politician is a “savvy real-estate investor".
I didn’t get a chance to read the entire NBER paper, but an important nuance is that it takes an industry-normalized perspective.
It could be possible that someone in Congress has insider information about a specific industry that helps them, but not about a specific stock. For example, if I knew about specific legislation that would impact auto manufacturers I may have a better idea to get in or out of that sector without necessarily knowing if Ford will do better than GM.
To your point about meta-analysis it would also be useful to know if members are worse than normies at picking industries as well.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26975/w269...
Both papers could be true if congresspeople are worse than the public at picking stocks, but congressional leaders are just better than the average congressperson