Institutional compliance by firms in transition economies

Abstract

This research revisits the effects of a country's institutional framework on individual firms' behavior, in particular focusing on their propensity to comply with legal rules in transition economies. The authors purport to explain the variation in compliance with legal rules and employ a rich data set on thousands of firms from dozens of transition countries to this end. They find that most of the variation emanates from country-wide differences in institutional quality, although some firm characteristics play a role as well. They also find indications that differences across countries are smoothed with income.