World Business Environment Survey Research Articles

Does Financial Constraint Hinder Firm Growth?

ABSTRACT Financial constraint is a major obstacle for firm growth in emerging economies. Using a World Business Environment Survey (WEBS) dataset, we find that formal financing constraint hampers firm growth. Small firms suffer more than large ones from financial constraint, whereas there is no significant difference between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and non-SOEs. Our results are robust when we use collateral constraint as an instrumental variable for formal financial constraint. We provide supporting evidence for the promulgation of financial liberalization, which can help alleviate financial constraint, enhance firm growth, and therefore improve economic resilience and prevent financial risks in an emerging economy such as China.

Religiosity and corruption in bank lending

AbstractThis paper explores the effect of country‐level religiosity on corruption in bank lending. By using the World Business Environment Survey, we find that firms in more religious countries perceive a higher level of bank lending corruption. Furthermore, larger (smaller) foreign (government) ownership and more competition in a country's banking system attenuate the adverse effect of religiosity. The effect of religiosity carries over to bank loan performance. Our findings are confirmed by various robustness checks. This study contributes to a more balanced and comprehensive understanding of the role of religion in business ethics.

A Novel Auction Blockchain System with Price Recommendation and Trusted Execution Environment

Online auctions are now widely used, with all the convenience and efficiency brought by internet technology. Despite the advantages over traditional auction methods, some challenges still remain in online auctions. According to the World Business Environment Survey (WBES) conducted by the World Bank, about 60% of companies have admitted to bribery and manipulation of the auction results. In addition, buyers are prone to the winner’s curse in an online auction environment. Since the increase in information availability can reduce uncertainty, easy access to relevant auction information is essential for buyers to avoid the winner’s curse. In this study, we propose an Online Auction Price Suggestion System (OAPSS) to protect the data from being interfered with by third-party programs based on Intel’s Software Guard Extensions (SGX) technology and the characteristics of the blockchain. Our proposed system provides a smart contract by using α-Sutte indicator in the final transaction price prediction as a bidding price recommendation, which helps buyers to reduce the information uncertainty on the value of the product. The amount spent on the smart contract in this study, excluding deployed contracts, plus the rest of the fees is less than US$1. Experimental results of the simulation show that there is a significant difference (p < 0.05) between the recommended price group and the actual price group in the highest bid. Therefore, we may conclude that our proposed bidder’s price recommendation function in the smart contract may mitigate the loss of buyers caused by the winner’s curse.

Is bribing a good strategy? Imbalanced interdependence and hazard of opportunism in bribery

PurposeIn fragile institutional environments, firms often have no choice but bribery as the means to access the services monopolized by the government. Corrupt government officials whose resources are valuable to many different firms can easily find other firms willing to offer bribes. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether and how this imbalanced interdependence exposes the bribing firm to the hazard of opportunism from the bribed officials.Design/methodology/approachThis study draws on World Business Environment Survey (WBES) data and the instrumental variable (IV) Probit estimator with Heckman correction for the potential selection bias.FindingsThe authors find that the more firms depend on bribery to acquire governmental resources, the severer the level of opportunism they encounter from the government officials. In addition, the authors find that although the presence of a legal alternative to bribery reduces the level of a corrupt government official's opportunism that a bribing firm experiences, the more firms depend on bribery despite the presence of a legal alternative, the higher the level of the corrupt official's opportunism that the firm will experience. Finally, the authors find that establishing a relational contract with government officials reduces the hazard of opportunism.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the resource dependence literature by finding that a greater imbalance in the interdependence between two parties in bribery exposes the more dependent party to a larger hazard of opportunism. The finding that an ineffective alternative to a current resource provider would not strengthen but weaken a resource seeker's bargaining power expands the literature. The authors also contribute to the corruption research by showing the significant strategic, not legal, risk to bribing firms of engaging in bribery, which to date has not been sufficiently discussed.

Religiosity and Corruption in Bank Lending

This paper explores the effect of country-level religiosity on corruption in bank lending at the firm level. Using data from the World Business Environment Survey, we find strong and robust evidence that firms in more religious countries perceive a higher level of corruption in bank lending than firms in less religious countries. The economic significance of this effect is comparable to that of other well-known determinants of lending corruption. We further find that the banking market structure affects the relation between religiosity and lending corruption. Our findings are robust to alternative measures of religiosity and lending corruption. Finally, we address endogeneity concerns by using natural disaster exposure as an instrument for religiosity. Our study contributes to a more balanced and comprehensive understanding of the role of religion in finance.

Corruption predictability and corruption voting in Asian democracies

I examine how the structure of corrupt exchanges between voters and politicians—an important-yet-underexplored form of informal institutions—shapes voters’ electoral behavior toward corruption. I argue that when voters have a clear idea of whom to bribe to secure desired services and how much they need to offer, they are less likely to engage in corruption voting and hold corrupt incumbents electorally accountable for their malfeasance. Utilizing the World Business Environment Survey on corruption predictability and the Asian Barometer survey on voters’ electoral behaviors, I report empirical evidence that institutionalized corruption promotes greater electoral tolerance of corrupt politicians in Asian democracies. The results hold against a number of robustness checks. The paper thus furthers our understanding of the effect of informal political institutions on corruption voting as well as Asia’s corruption exceptionalism.

Interaction effect of tax evasion and legal system inefficiency on firms' financial constraints

This paper analyzes the joint effect of tax evasion and the legal system's inefficiency on firms' financial constraints. Our theory highlights that each factor exerts ambiguous effects on the difficulties encountered by firms that seek financing. However, under mild assumptions, our model leads to the conclusion that higher degrees of tax evasion and judicial inefficiencies both increase firms' financial constraints. Moreover, tax evasion and legal system inefficiency exert a joint impact as they mitigate each other's negative effect on credit constraints. We test our results by using firm-level data based on the World Business Environment Survey. The empirical findings confirm our theoretical hypotheses.

Culture and corruption in bank lending revisited

This paper aims to reassess the effects of culture on corruption in bank lending. These effects were first studied by prior studies which use Hofstede's cultural dimension data. The Hofstede's cultural data are constructed from survey data collected between 1967 and 1973. The data on corruption in bank lending taken from the world business environment survey (WBES), however, were collected between 1999 and 2000. This paper uses cultural data from the global leadership and organisational behaviour effectiveness (GLOBE) project which are constructed from survey data collected in the 1990s instead. The data from the GLOBE project are not only more recent but also provide more cultural dimensions than those of Hofstede. The results indicate that in-group collectivism still increases corruption in bank lending. The results suggest that assertiveness and uncertainty avoidance no longer have a significant effect on corruption in bank lending.

Culture and Corruption in Bank Lending Revisited

This paper aims to reassess the effects of culture on corruption in bank lending. These effects were first studied by prior studies which use Hofstede's cultural dimension data. The Hofstede's cultural data are constructed from survey data collected between 1967 and 1973. The data on corruption in bank lending taken from the world business environment survey (WBES), however, were collected between 1999 and 2000. This paper uses cultural data from the global leadership and organisational behaviour effectiveness (GLOBE) project which are constructed from survey data collected in the 1990s instead. The data from the GLOBE project are not only more recent but also provide more cultural dimensions than those of Hofstede. The results indicate that in-group collectivism still increases corruption in bank lending. The results suggest that assertiveness and uncertainty avoidance no longer have a significant effect on corruption in bank lending.

Creditor protection, information sharing and credit for small and medium-sized enterprises: Cross-country evidence

Using World Business Environment Survey results for firms in 61 countries, together with country dummies that allow us to deal with observed and unobserved country-specific components, as well as with partial endogeneity, we explore the roles played by creditor protection (e.g. the enforcement of credit contracts) and by the development of credit information mechanisms, such as credit registries, in determining the availability of bank credit for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We find that better creditor protection and the development of information-sharing mechanisms narrow the financing gap between small and large firms. Countries with poor creditor protection can offset this shortcoming by implementing credit information mechanisms.

Power Outages and Production Efficiency of Firms in Africa

Literature shows that power generation capacity in sub-Sahara Africa is lower than that of any other region in the world and capacity growth has also stagnated. Africa currently faces major electricity shortages with a number of power outages which has the tendency of rendering many firms less efficient in their production. This study therefore seeks to find the impact of power outages on production efficiency of firms in Africa. The source of data is the World Business Environment Survey conducted by the World Bank. The analysis deployed stochastic production frontier and a two-tail Tobit models. The finding shows that the number of power outages experienced in a typical month has a negative impact on the production efficiency of firms in Africa. This call for immense investment projects in new generation capacity in order to ameliorate the negative effect of power crisis on production process of firms in Africa.

Foreign Ownership of Firms and Corruption in Africa

The study finds the impact of the percentage of total annual sales of a firm paid as informal payments to public officials (bribes) on foreign ownership of firms in Africa while controlling for other variables outside the country of origin of investment. The study used secondary data from the World Business Environment Survey conducted by the World Bank. In all 3290 firms made up of the manufacturing, services and retail sectors are included in the analysis. The Tobit and probit estimation techniques were used. The results indicate that the percentage of total annual sales of the firm paid as informal payments to the public officials has a negative and highly significant impact on foreign ownership of firms in Africa. African leaders should therefore institute policies to control corruption in order to boost foreign investors’ confidence in their economies.

What Do Corruption Indices Measure?

Evidence from the International Crime Victimization Survey and the World Business Environment Survey suggests that actual corruption experience is a weak predictor of reported corruption perception, and that some of the factors commonly found to “reduce” corruption, such as economic development, democratic institutions or Protestant traditions, systematically bias corruption perception indices downward from corruption experience. In addition, perception indices are influenced by absolute (as opposed to relative) levels of corruption, which tends to penalize large countries, and they exhibit diminishing sensitivity to both absolute and relative corruption, indicating that they may better capture differences among countries with low levels of corruption than among highly corrupt ones. Individual characteristics such as education, age, or employment status, and firm‐level characteristics such as the number of competitors are also found to influence corruption perceptions holding experience constant.

What Do Corruption Indices Measure?

Evidence from the International Crime Victimization Survey and the World Business Environment Survey suggests that actual corruption experience is a weak predictor of reported corruption perception, and that some of the factors commonly found to “reduce” corruption, such as economic development, democratic institutions or Protestant traditions, systematically bias corruption perception indices downward from corruption experience. In addition, perception indices are influenced by absolute (as opposed to relative) levels of corruption, which tends to penalize large countries, and they exhibit diminishing sensitivity to both absolute and relative corruption, indicating that they may better capture differences among countries with low levels of corruption than among highly corrupt ones. Individual characteristics such as education, age, or employment status, and firm‐level characteristics such as the number of competitors are also found to influence corruption perceptions holding experience constant.

An Empirical Investigation on Firms’ Proactive and Passive Motivation for Bribery in China

This research investigates firms’ bribery motivations in China. Based on resource dependence theory and anomie theory, we identify resource conditions as firms’ proactive motivation to bribe and firms’ perceived institutional environment as their passive motivation to bribe. We use the data from 2002 World Business Environment Survey, collected by the World Bank, to investigate firms’ bribery in the world’s largest emerging market, China. We employ a multi-level logistic model to test our hypotheses. The results show that unsatisfactory general and task environmental conditions may trigger firms to bribe in order to compete for better resources and opportunities; institutional conditions such as the security expenditure and anomie climate may make firms perceive bribery as a common phenomenon and thus induce firms to bribe. This research provides some insights to understand business bribery behaviors in emerging market. It also discusses some managerial implications and guidelines for policy-making from the findings.

Firm characteristics and influence on government rule-making: Theory and evidence

An adversarial game is used to model a firm's intrinsic and exerted influence over a regulator. Data from the World Business Environment Survey provide strong evidence in support of model hypotheses across a wide range of government agents, countries, and regulatory areas. Of particular relevance to public debate, the theory and econometric analysis show that large firms are more likely to be influential and to benefit from subsidies and low tax constraints. However, large firms are also likely to face greater regulatory constraint from environmental and safety rules.

The effect of institutional quality on firm export performance in emerging economies: a contingency model of firm age and size

It is widely accepted that countries with sound formal and informal institutions create more robust environments for firm performance. However, due to the liabilities faced by firms without available slack and/or market power, we contend that institutions are especially important for new and small firms. Unfortunately, there is little research examining the potential moderating effect of firm size or age on the relationship between institutional quality and export performance. In response, we hypothesize that institutional quality will be more important to increasing the export performance of new and small firms compared with their large, established counterparts. We test our hypotheses using data from the World Bank’s World Business Environment Survey. The results of our analyses offer support for our model, although some institutional variables appear to be more important to export performance than others. We conclude by discussing the implications of our results.

Political Influence of Firms in the Tradables and Non-Tradables Sectors: A Cross-Country Analysis

Recent theoretical studies have shown that firms lobby government agencies to influence the structure of trade policies. This article empirically examines whether firms classified as either exporting or import-competing (i.e. firms in the tradables sector) have differential levels of political influence relative to domestic firms that only produce non-traded goods (i.e. firms in the non-tradables sector). We use a rich firm-level, cross-sectional dataset from the World Business Environment Survey to achieve this objective. Results from the analysis reveal that exporting or import-competing firms do have more political influence relative to domestic firms that neither export nor produce import-competing goods. Market structure, firm age, firm size, government ownership, and dependence on public infrastructure also affect the extent of political influence that firms have.

Business perceptions of regulative institutions in Central and Eastern Europe

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate, theoretically and empirically, how entrepreneurial firms' perceptions of formal institutions differ across Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses data from the World Bank Group's World Business Environment Survey (WBES) compare entrepreneurial firms' perceptions of changes in different components of regulative institutions in Latin and orthodox CEE economies. The data used in this paper capture a decade's progress in the development of regulative institutions in these economies.FindingsIt was found that the state's regulatory, participatory, and supportive roles are more favorable to businesses in the Latin countries than in the orthodox countries. The findings provide support for the notion that informal institutions influence the degree of generalizeability and replicability of Western political and economic institutions' success in driving firms' entrepreneurial behavior in emerging economies.Research limitations/implicationsThe first limitation is that the data used were collected about a decade ago. Another limitation relates to a lack of coverage of many former Soviet republics and some other CEE countries in the WBES.Practical implicationsThe findings point to the need of strategic planning and various degrees of adaptation of business strategies across the CEE economies. Second, businesses may differ in terms of the relative importance of regulatory, participatory, and supportive roles of the government in their operations. Finally, some CEE economies can be influenced more than others by international pressures.Originality/valueThis paper's greatest value stems from the fact that it uses internationally comparable firm‐level data to empirically examine entrepreneurial firms' perceptions of regulative institutions in CEE economies.

Determinants of Bribery in Asian Firms: Evidence from the World Business Environment Survey

While it is widely believed that bribery is ubiquitous among Asian firms, few studies have offered systematic evidence of such activities, and the dynamics of bribery in Asian firms have not been well understood. The research reported here used World Business Environment Survey data to examine some distinct characteristics of bribery in Asian firms and to empirically test 10 hypotheses on determinants of bribery. We find that firm characteristics such as firm size, growth rate, and corporate governance are important determinants of bribery activities at the firm level, and that Asian firms are more likely to bribe when faced with fierce market competition, corrupted court systems, convoluted licensing requirements, nontransparent interpretation of laws and regulations, inefficient government service delivery, and high taxes.