prior shared experience and survival of spin-offs from restructured state enterprises

Many organizations, especially in emerging economies, trace their origins to restructured state enterprises, and this study explores the implications of such origins for organizational adaptation to changing environmental conditions. We compare the activity choices and survival chances of spin-offs from restructured state enterprises with those of de novo organizations. We argue that prior shared experience of spin-offs’ managers and employees facilitates the redeployment of routines developed in parent state enterprises. This should predispose spin-offs to pursue familiar activities, but this choice is not completely predetermined, and its survival implications depend on the environmental conditions. Our empirical findings suggest that spin-offs from restructured state enterprises are less likely to engage in new activities than de novo organizations. However, those restructuring spin-offs that do engage in new activities before the regulatory regime shift significantly improve their survival chances after the shift. Moreover, we find that the detrimental effect of the regulatory regime shift and the beneficial effect of engaging in new activities are stronger for spin-offs from restructured state enterprises than for de novo organizations.authorsversionpublishe

The Re-Emerging Role of the State in Contemporary Russia

I examine ownership structure of Russian firms during the 1998-2006 period, where a greater emphasis is placed on motivations behind increased government ownership in the latter years, when oligarchs' opportunistic influence on the firm diminished as state ownership correspondingly increased. As this phenomenon is also correlated with improved corporate growth during the period, I argue that state participation in corporate governance acted as an effective substitute mechanism to constrain wealth-tunnelling behaviour of corporate insiders and local bureaucrats in a country defined by a weak property rights system. © 2012 Springer-Verlag

Russia’s Legal Transitions: Marxist Theory, Neoclassical Economics and the Rule of Law

We review the role of economic theory in shaping the process of legal change in Russia during the two transitions it experienced during the course of the twentieth century: the transition to a socialist economy organised along the lines of state ownership of the means of production in the 1920s, and the transition to a market economy which occurred after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Despite differences in methodology and in policy implications, Marxist theory, dominant in the 1920s, and neoclassical economics, dominant in the 1990s, offered a similarly reductive account of law as subservient to wider economic forces. In both cases, the subordinate place accorded to law undermined the transition process. Although path dependence and history are frequently invoked to explain the limited development of the rule of law in Russia during the 1990s, policy choices driven by a deterministic conception of law and economics also played a role.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40803-015-0012-

Endogenous ownership structure:factors affecting the post-privatisation equity in largest Hungarian firms

Using a data set for the 162 largest Hungarian firms during the period of 1994-1999, this paper explores the determinants of equity shares held by both foreign investors and Hungarian corporations. Evidence is found for a post-privatisation evolution towards more homogeneous equity structures, where dominant categories of Hungarian and foreign owners aim at achieving controlling stakes. In addition, focusing on firm-level characteristics we find that exporting firms attract foreign owners who acquire controlling equity stakes. Similarly, firm-size measurements are positively associated with the presence of foreign investors. However, they are negatively associated with 100% foreign ownership, possibly because the marginal costs of acquiring additional equity are growing with the size of the assets. The results are interpreted within the framework of the existing theory. In particular, following Demsetz and Lehn (1985) and Demsetz and Villalonga (2001) we argue that equity should not be treated as an exogenous variable. As for specific determinants of equity levels, we focus on informational asymmetries and (unobserved) ownership-specific characteristics of foreign investors and Hungarian investors