Local governance and business performance in Vietnam: the transaction costs’ perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACTLocal governance and business performance in Vietnam: the transaction costs’ perspective. Regional Studies. This paper adopts a transaction costs’ perspective to explain why the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) may vary across regions of an emerging economy. Furthermore, it is argued that young and small firms gain more from the improvement of local governance than do old and large firms. In addition, depending on the institutional history, SMEs will respond differently to the incentives provided by local governance. Analysing more than 300,000 SMEs in Vietnam during 2006–12, it is shown that higher-quality local governance positively influences local SME revenue growth; this effect is stronger for young and small firms, and matters more where institutional history suggests there is less support for entrepreneurship.