Effects of regulatory burden and corruption on firm performance: Evidence from Moldova

Firms in Moldova face a high level of regulatory burden, as proxied by the number of inspections by public authorities. At the same time, they face high levels of corruption. We examine the effect of frequent inspections on four measures of firm performance: labour and total factor productivity, and levels of tangible and intangible assets. We also investigate how corruption affects the relationship between inspections and firm performance. We perform panel data analysis using firm-level administrative data and survey data from Moldova in 2005–2015. The results show that inspections and corruption each affect firm productivity negatively, but corruption moderates the negative effect of inspections. We also find that inspections and intangible assets are positively correlated, but this correlation is weaker for higher levels of corruption. Finally we examine whether these results differ by industry, firm size and ownership types. Inspections and corruption affect medium and large firms, and state-owned enterprises differently from micro and small firms and private firms respectively.     

The business environment and Moroccan firm productivity

The paper focuses on the role of the business environment in understanding differences in the total factor productivity of Moroccan firms. The business environment is captured by measures which include the investment climate in which firms operate, i.e. access to credit, regulatory and institutional environment and infrastructure. The evidence on the relationship between credit and productivity is strongly indicative of credit resources misallocation in Morocco. We also find that, heavier bureaucracy and differences in regulations appear to have a negative effect on firm productivity. This last result is particularly relevant for small firms, and/or those that do not export and/or those with no access to foreign capital.     

The Effect of Corruption on Investment Growth: Evidence from Firms in Latin America,Sub‐Saharan Africa,and Transition Countries*

Most of the empirical studies that analyze the impact of corruption on investment have three common features: they employ country‐level data on investment, corruption is measured at the country level, and data for countries from several regions are pooled together. This paper uses firm‐level data on investment and measures corruption at the firm and country level, and allows the effect of corruption to vary by region. Our dependent variable is firms' investment growth and we employ six measures of corruption from four different sources—two firm‐level measures and four country‐level measures. We find that the effect of corruption on investments varies significantly across regions: corruption has a negative and significant effect on investment growth for firms in Transition countries but has no significant impact for firms in Latin America and Sub‐Saharan Africa. Furthermore, for Transition countries, corruption is the most important determinant of investment.     

A journey from a corruption port to a tax haven

We sketch a model according to which tax havens attract corporate income generated in corrupted countries. We consider the choice of optimal bribes by corrupt officials and the share of the proceeds of corruption that will be concealed in tax havens. Our framework provides novel welfare implications of tax havens. First, tax havens’ services have a positive effect on welfare through encouraging investment by firms fearing expropriation and bribes in corrupt countries. Second, by supporting corruption and the concealment of officials’ bribes, tax havens discourage the provision of public goods and hence have also a negative effect on welfare. The net welfare effect depends on the specified preferences and parameters. One source of this ambiguity is that the presence of multinational firms in corrupted countries is positively associated with demanding tax havens’ operations. Using firm-level data, we provide new empirical results supporting this hypothesis.     

Corruption and cross-border investment by multinational firms

Motivated by previous studies on the effect of corruption on foreign direct investment, we examine the impact of a distance measure of corruption between host and source countries on cross-border direct investment and find that corruption distance deters cross-border investment. The evidence indicates that corruption distance is not as serious a deterrent of outward direct investment from more-corrupt countries as it is from less-corrupt countries. We conclude that multinational firms with the capacity to engage in bribery can disregard this activity in transparent environments, whereas multinational firms accustomed to operating in transparent environments find it difficult to overcome the administrative complexities in corrupt environments. Journal of Comparative Economics 34 (4) (2006) 839–856.     

政企合谋、环境规制与企业全要素生产率*

本文利用中国工业企业数据库和地级市层面的企业治污投资数据构建了一个2003—2007年的面板,实证检验了环境规制对企业全要素生产率的影响以及政企合谋在背后的作用。实证结果表明,用企业治污投资占工业增加值比重衡量的环境规制强度每上升1%,企业当期的生产率下降约1%。当政企合谋可能性上升时,环境规制对企业生产率的边际影响在减弱,说明政企合谋带来的监管放松和处罚不力弱化了环境规制对合谋企业生产率的影响。本文的政策启示在于中央政府应加强环保领域统一执法,破解囚徒困境式的环境规制。同时,本文的发现为环保机构监测监察执法垂直管理制度改革提供了合理性依据。     

Does R&D spending boost tangible investment? An analysis on European firms

This article investigates the relationship between firm’s R&D intensity, expressed as R&D expenditure over sales, and investment intensity in tangible assets. It is commonly acknowledged that R&D requires additional physical investment to be implemented. R&D increases a firm’s productivity and return to tangible investments, thus, providing to the firm incentives to bear high tangible capital costs and to invest more. This represents a crucial issue for a firm’s growth, particularly considering the strong interaction between physical capital accumulation and technological progress. The analysis is based on a large sample of manufacturing firms across seven European countries in the period 2007–2009. Since the sub-sample of firms performing R&D might not be random, there may potentially be an endogeneity issue. The analysis also considers that firms may decide to spend on R&D and investment in physical capital simultaneously. The questions of both endogeneity and simultaneity are dealt with by employing an instrumental variable two-step procedure. We find a positive and significant impact of R&D intensity on firms’ tangible investment intensity. The econometric results highlight the importance of financial factors, particularly with respect to firms’ internal resources. Exposure to international trade has a negative impact on investment, possibly depending on the time-span of the sample used.

Abbreviations: Technological Innovation and R&D; Investment Capital; Industry Studies; Firm Behavior; Empirical Analysis     

Determinants of firms’ investment behaviour: a multilevel approach

This article investigates the determinants of firms’ investment behaviour using firm data from 101 developing and emerging economies. A substantial number of firms does not invest in fixed capital or invests little relative to sales revenue. Using a multilevel probit model we study what factors trigger investment, and using a multilevel Heckman selection model we study what factors influence a firm’s investment-to-sales ratio. We find that firms’ investment behaviour has relatively little dependency on a country’s macroeconomic setting. Additionally, we find that, on average, firms that are completely foreign-owned have a relatively lower investment-to-sales ratio. Finally, we find evidence which suggests that the probability of investing is higher for firms located in countries with more control of corruption and we find some evidence which suggests that partially foreign-owned firms located in countries with relatively less corruption have a relatively higher investment-to-sales ratio.     

Environmental regulation and firm location choice in China

How may environmental regulation affect firm location choice? While this question has generated great research interest from high-standard, industrial economies, in this article we turn the spotlight to low-standard, developing countries and use China’s Census of Manufactures data during 2003–2008 to explore how firms with different ownership, during different policy regimes as well as from different industries may respond to environmental regulations in different ways. Results show environmental stringency has a positive effect on state-owned enterprises’ location choice during 2003–2005, but the effect becomes insignificant during 2006–2008. Private-owned enterprises, foreign-owned enterprises and collective-owned enterprises are more likely to enter areas with less stringent environmental regulations during 2003–2005. However, this pattern is reversed for the period of 2006–2008. Furthermore, the above relationships are more pronounced for firms in polluting industries.     

Do vertical spillovers differ by investors’ productivity? Theory and evidence from Vietnam

Developing countries are eager to host foreign direct investment to receive positive technology spillovers to their local firms. However, what types of foreign firms are desirable for the host country to achieve spillovers best? We address this question using firm‐level panel data from Vietnam to investigate whether foreign Asian investors in downstream sectors with different productivity affect the productivity of local Vietnamese firms in upstream sectors differently. Using endogenous structural breaks, we divide Asian investors into low‐, middle‐, and high‐productivity groups. The results suggest that the presence of the middle group has the strongest positive spillover effect. The differential spillover effects can be explained by a simple model with vertical linkages and productivity‐enhancing investment by local suppliers. The theoretical mechanism is also empirically confirmed.     

Corruption and inefficiency: Theory and evidence from electric utilities

We investigate the determinants of the efficiency of firms with a focus on the role of corruption. We construct a simple theoretical model where corruption increases the factor requirements of firms because it diverts managerial effort away from factor coordination. We then exploit a unique dataset comprising firm-level information on 80 electricity distribution firms from 13 Latin American countries for the years 1994 to 2001. As predicted by the model, we find that more corruption in the country is strongly associated with more inefficient firms, in the sense that they employ more inputs to produce a given level of output. The economic magnitude of the effects is large. The results hold both in models with country and firm fixed effects. The results survive several robustness checks, including different measures of output and efficiency, and instrumenting for corruption. Other elements associated with inefficiency are public ownership, inflation, and lack of law and order, but corruption appears to play a separate and more robust role.     

Services liberalization and productivity of manufacturing firms

Employing a unique database of Ukrainian firms in 2001–07, we use the external push for liberalization in the services sector as a source of exogenous variation to identify the effect of services liberalization on total factor productivity (TFP) of manufacturing firms. The results indicate that a standard deviation increase in services liberalization within a firm is associated with a 9.2 percent increase in TFP. The effect is stronger for firms with high productivity, bringing about a reallocation of resources within an industry. Industry‐level results show that the effect of reallocation on industry productivity is almost as strong as the within‐firm effect. The dynamic interaction of services liberalization and TFP through the investment channel reinforces the effect. The effect is robust to different estimation methods and to different sub‐samples of the data. In particular, it is more pronounced for domestic and small firms.     

我国创业企业研发投资经济绩效的实证研究——基于创业板上市企业的经验数据

以2009—2011年我国深圳创业板上市企业为研究对象,从会计业绩和市场业绩等角度,实证考察了其R&D投资的经济绩效。结果显示:创业企业的R&D投资整体上并未呈现出积极的经济效果;R&D投资的经济效果具有明显的行业特征,制造业创业企业的R&D投资对其经济绩效具有一定的积极影响,但该影响具有滞后性;信息技术业创业企业的R&D投资对其当期和滞后一期的经济绩效均未产生积极影响,表明信息技术业创业企业的R&D投资存在一定程度的非效率行为。     

Regional foreign direct investment and technology spillover: evidence across different clusters in India

This paper examines whether there exist productivity spillovers from foreign direct investment (FDI) to domestic firms at the regional level, using firm-level panel dataset covering 22 manufacturing industries in India from 2000 to 2012. In order to estimate the productivity spillovers from FDI at the regional level, we select 10 industrial clusters across 4 regions in India. In estimating productivity, we control for a possible simultaneity bias by using semi-parametric estimation techniques. We find that local firms benefit from horizontal and vertical FDI, but the benefits from the latter are found to be substantially stronger. The absorptive capacity of domestic firms is highly relevant to harvest the spilled technology from foreign-owned firms. Furthermore, we find that domestic firms belonging to high-technology industries benefit more from FDI at the regional level. We also find that market concentration is a crucial conduit for firm innovation, technological upgradation, and having a direct effect on local firm total factor productivity.     

Corruption,Bureaucracy and Firm Productivity in Africa

This paper estimates the impact of corruption and poor bureaucratic quality on firm productivity for a unique dataset with firm‐specific data of more than 900 firms over 12 years for Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania. We first discuss why poor bureaucratic quality and, especially, corruption are expected to have negative impacts on firm productivity. We then employ Data Envelopment Analysis to estimate firm productivity and pooled OLS and Tobit regression analysis to estimate the effects of corruption and bureaucratic quality on firm productivity. We find that less productive firms are more likely to engage in corrupt activities; both poor bureaucratic quality and corruption reduce firm productivity; and corruption has a greater negative impact on productivity.     

Beyond natural resources: horizontal and vertical FDI diversification in Sub-Saharan Africa

This article uses firm-level data to analyse the drivers of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to the manufacturing and services sectors of 30 Sub-Saharan African countries. It shows that improving the investment climate helps to attract aggregate FDI. By analysing disaggregate FDI data, the article establishes that there is considerable contrast in behaviour between vertical FDI (foreign firms producing for export) and horizontal FDI (foreign firms producing for local markets). In particular, the latter firms are attracted to areas with higher trade regulations, highlighting their interest in protected markets. Furthermore, horizontal FDI is more affected by financing and human capital constraints and less affected by infrastructure and institutional constraints than vertical FDI is.     

中国地区腐败对民营企业国有化的影响

本文使用1998-2007年中国工业企业数据库与省级腐败数据,通过一个简单的模型,证明了在腐败的制度环境下,国有股权可以帮助民营企业避免政府侵害,因此腐败越严重、民营企业越倾向于国有化;并且,盈利能力强的企业更容易受到腐败的侵害。本文发现无论是狭义国有化还是广义国有化都与企业所在地区的腐败率以及企业资产回报率显著正相关;此外,资产回报率越高的企业因腐败而国有化的概率越高。因此,“国有化”可能是中国民营企业面对政府侵害的应对措施。这对我们理解转型国家中民营企业的生存环境与政企关系具有重要意义。     

Ownership, investment climate and firm performance

The importance of a country's ‘investment climate’ for economic growth has recently received much attention. In this paper we use a new survey of 1,500 Chinese enterprises in five cities to measure more precisely components of the investment climate and their effects on firm performance. Our firm‐level analysis reveals that both ownership and investment climate measures matter for investment, productivity and growth. In particular, firm performance is positively correlated with foreign and domestic private ownership, light regulatory burdens, limited corruption, technological infrastructure and labour market flexibility. In contrast, gains from improving banking access and physical infrastructure are quite limited.     

Does policy reform promote FDI in developing economies? a firm-level simulation approach

How do policy reforms for foreign investors in developing economies affect inward foreign direct investment? Using a firm heterogeneity model calibrated to match data on Japanese multinational firms, we simulate how multinationals respond to a decline in investment procedure days. We find that such policy reforms in investment procedures significantly increase the aggregate entries and sales of multinational firms in developing economies, with the more pronounced impact at the extensive margin than at the intensive margin. At the firm level, declining entry costs encourage more productive firms to invest in a wider range of markets although such impacts are modest for the most productive firms that already penetrate many markets. The impacts on foreign sales per multinational firm are less clear-cut in magnitude across productivity levels in part because falling entry costs directly increase multinational entry to developing economies, but only indirectly encourage their existing production in these markets.     

R&D投资对企业绩效的影响:基于浙江永康制造业的实证研究

本文应用企业资源观和组织学习理论,旨在检验R&D投资对企业绩效的影响,并进一步考察其作用机制。来自浙江永康市139家制造企业的数据表明,R&D投资对企业绩效各个维度的影响并非一致。具体而言,R&D投资和企业利润呈倒U形关系,而对企业生产率的影响并不显著。进一步,R&D投资对企业利润的影响是通过新产品作为完全中介变量的。本文的研究结果暗示,对于R&D投资到一定水平的企业,再增加R&D投资需要谨慎决策。此外,除了产品创新,企业管理者需要探索创新其他渠道,并努力发挥多种渠道的协同效应。