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We analyze factors behind 23,213 distressed acquisitions in European emerging markets from 2007 to 2019. Besides the impact of financial ratios, legal form, ownership structure, firm size, and age, we emphasize the role of institutions and channels of their propagation. We show that the quality and enforcement of insolvency laws are linked with the lower probability of distressed acquisitions, followed by corruption control and progress in banking reforms. The impact of institutions is larger in less-advanced countries as compared to economically stronger ones. The effect of institutions increased after the financial crisis but declined as the economic situation improved.

This paper traces the survival status of 93,260 Russian business firms in the period of 2007–2019 and empirically examines the determinants of the acquisition of financially distressed companies (i.e., distressed acquisitions). We found that, of 93,260 firms, 50,743 failed in management, and among these distressed firms, 10,110 were rescued by acquisition during the observation period. Our empirical results indicate that, in Russian regions, the weakness of the legal system tends to increase the probability of distressed acquisitions, while other socioeconomic risks negatively affect it. These tendencies are common in most industries and regions. It is also revealed that, in the most-developed area, monotown enterprises are more likely than other firms to be bailed out by acquisition after management failure, but it is not always true for the whole federation.

新型コロナウイルスが巻き起こす疫病災禍に対して、ロシアは、経済活動の強力な抑制という政策手段を選択しない世界有数の国である。このため同国は、経済活動のウイルス感染拡大効果の検証を可能にする貴重な社会実験の場を提供している。本稿は、ロシア連邦構成主体の月次および四半期パネルデータを用いて、如何なる経済活動が、どの程度の感染拡大効果を発揮するのかを実証的に検証した。分析結果は、一般市民をより多く巻き込む経済活動や一般市民の消費・社会活動をより鼓舞する経済活動であればあるほど、新型コロナウイルス感染度により大きなインパクトを及ぼすという筆者の予想を強く裏付けるものであったばかりではなく、経済活動が新型コロナウイルス感染度を変動せしめるまでの時間差は、その種類や様態によって非常に様々であること、また、経済活動と新型コロナウイルス感染拡大の経路や強弱は、ロシア地域の間で大きく異なり得ることをも明らかにした。これら一連の分析結果は、現在および将来の疫病対策にとって重要な政策的示唆を含意している。, Russia is one of the few countries in the world that has not opted for the policy measure of strong suppression of economic activity in response to the epidemic disaster caused by the new coronavirus. Therefore, Russia provides a valuable forum for social experiments that allow us to examine the effect of economic activity on the spread of the virus. In this paper, we empirically examine the effect of economic activities on the spread of the virus using monthly and quarterly panel data of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. The results strongly supported our prediction that economic activities that involve more peoples and those that stimulate more consumption and social activities of citizens have a greater impact on the level of coronavirus infection. We also found that the time lag between economic activities and the spread of coronaviruses varied greatly depending on the type and mode of economic activities, and that the pathways and intensity of economic activities and the spread of coronaviruses could differ greatly among Russian regions. These results have important policy implications for current and future epidemic control.

Bank survival is essential to economic growth and development because banks mediate the financing of the economy. A bank’s overall condition is often assessed by a supervisory rating system called CAMELS, an acronym for the components Capital adequacy, Asset quality, Management quality, Earnings, Liquidity, and Sensitivity to market risk. Estimates of the impact of CAMELS components on bank survival vary widely. We perform a meta-synthesis and meta-regression analysis (MRA) using 2120 estimates collected from 50 studies. In the MRA, we account for uncertainty in moderator selection by employing Bayesian model averaging. The results of the synthesis indicate an economically negligible impact of CAMELS variables on bank survival; in addition, the effect of bank-specific, (macro)economic, and market factors is virtually absent. The results of the heterogeneity analysis and publication bias analysis are consistent in terms that they do not find an economically significant impact of the CAMELS variables. Moreover, best practice estimates show a small economic impact of CAMELS components and no impact of other factors. The study concludes that caution should be exercised when using CAMELS rating to predict bank survival or failure.

Over the past two decades, Africa has witnessed a dramatic increase in foreign direct investment (FDI) despite a lack of significant changes in infrastructure and the host country’s policies. What are the motives to invest in Africa? How do these investment motives differ for firms from developed and emerging markets? Several studies empirically tested these questions, however, provided inconclusive results. By taking 735 estimates extracted from 51 studies and applying advanced meta-analysis techniques, this study examines the motives of FDI in Africa. We found that compared to market-seeking motive, the effect size of resource seeking and efficiency seeking is larger (smaller) on FDI attractiveness in Africa. In terms of effect size, the impact of asset-seeking motive on FDI is statistically comparable to that of market-seeking motive. Contrary to general perceptions, the impact of natural resources on FDI attractiveness in Africa is not different from market seeking for developed countries’ firms. Our results show that compared to GDP per capita, the effect size of accessing minerals and oil reserves on FDI attractiveness in Africa is positive and significant for global and emerging market firms. Our research shows that there is more likelihood of type I and type II publication selection bias in this research field.

現代ロシアの企業セクターは、2つの歴史的潮流を源に形成された。ひとつは、社会主義時代に設立された国有企業の大規模な民営化、もうひとつは、体制転換期の新規参入と企業退出である。この結果、企業セクターは、市場原理の下でダイナミックな進化を遂げた。しかし、ロシアの企業部門には深刻な制度的・構造的欠陥が見られ、これらの問題が、民間部門の活力を大いに削いでいる可能性が否定できない。この観点からの一つの大きな問題は、国家と企業の共謀関係である。実際、ロシアの大企業の多くは、プーチン政権に近い「オリガルヒ」（政商）に支配されている。このため、主要産業における企業間競争は十分に活発とはいえず、更にその上、近年は、いわゆる「国家コーポレーション」とよばれる特殊法人の設立が相次いだことにより、戦略的産業に対する政府の直接的な統制が強化されてもいる。このようなロシア型国家資本主義と政府産業支配の展開は、企業セクターの活力を蝕んでいる。これらの諸問題は、ロシアにとって不利な国際政治・経済環境とも相俟って、同国経済の衰退を加速しかねない。, The corporate sector of modern Russia was formed as a result of two historical movements: One is the large-scale privatization of state-owned enterprises established during the socialist era; the other is massive firm entry and exit in the transition period. As a result, the corporate sector has undergone a dynamic evolution to adopt the market mechanism. However, the Russian corporate sector has serious institutional and structural flaws, and these problems have greatly reduced the vitality of the private sector. One of major issues from this viewpoint is the collusive state-business relationship. In fact, Russian big businesses are virtually dominated by oligarchs, who are close to the Putin administration; consequently, the inter-firm competition in these key industries is not active. Furthermore, the federal government’s direct control over strategic industries has been strengthened through the successive establishment of so-called “State Corporations” in recent years. The development of Russian-style state capitalism and state industrial domination significantly undermines the corporate sector. These drawbacks, in synergy with unfavorable international environments, have led to the decline of the Russian economy.

In this study, we conducted a meta-analysis of 2,191 empirical results reported in 213 existing studies to estimate the Mincer-type return to schooling in China. The results revealed that the retur...

In China, despite the drastic economic transition from a planned system to a market economy, the influences of the Communist Party of China (CPC)’s organization on firm management in both the publi...

We undertake a meta‐analysis of the effects of international investment agreements for the protection of foreign investors on foreign direct investment using 2107 estimates drawn from 74 studies. Our meta‐analysis finds robust evidence that effect of international investment agreements is so small as to be considered zero. However, our results do not rule out the possibility that the effect of these agreements is, in fact, positive and that current research methods are insufficiently powerful or precise to identify the underlying genuine effect. FDI from developed countries appears to be more responsive to the existence of investment protection, and there is evidence of publication–selection bias in favour of studies that find a positive effect for investor protection.

We analyze factors linked to bank survival on large dataset covering 17 CEE markets during the period of 2007–2015 by estimating the Cox proportional hazards model. We group banks across countries and according to their financial soundness. The overall financial development improves survival probabilities and its impact exhibits decreasing marginal returns as it is strongest in countries with lower level of financial development and banking reforms and in banks with low level of solvency. Measures of ownership structure, legal form, and corporate governance are the key economically significant factors that exhibit strongest economic effect on bank survival. Financial performance indicators predict bank survival rate with intuitively expected positive impact but their effect, in terms of economic significance, is smaller in comparison to other factors as well as the impact found in developed markets. Effect of above factors is most pronounced for banks with low financial soundness in term of their solvency. Results also appear to indicate that it makes exit more likely during the global financial crisis, shortly afterwards, and during the initial stage of the European sovereign debt crisis. This result is critical for central banks due to their regulatory and governance mandate. The results are robust with respect to size, age, and alternative assumptions on survival distribution.

In this paper, we trace the survival status of more than 110,000 Russian firms from 2007 to 2015 and examine the relationship between legal forms of incorporation and firm survivability across industries and different periods of economic crisis and growth. Applying the Cox proportional hazards model, we find an optimal legal form that maximizes the probability of firm survival: closed joint-stock companies and those adopting limited liability survive longer than open joint-stock companies, partnerships, or cooperatives. This relationship is robust across periods of boom and recession and across industries.

Meta‐analysis has become the conventional approach to synthesizing the results of empirical economics research. To further improve the transparency and replicability of the reported results and to raise the quality of meta‐analyses, the Meta‐Analysis of Economics Research Network has updated the reporting guidelines that were published by this Journal in 2013. Future meta‐analyses in economics will be expected to follow these updated guidelines or give valid reasons why a meta‐analysis should deviate from them.

In this paper, we conduct a meta-analysis using 1429 estimates extracted from 61 English and Chinese studies to estimate the wage effect of secondary and tertiary education in China. The meta-synthesis results show that the impact of tertiary education on wage levels is about twice that of secondary education. The test results for publication selection bias confirm that the literature contains genuine empirical evidence.

The aim of this paper is to empirically examine the regional determinants of the fertility rate in Russia using panel data for the period of 2005–2015. The estimation results of a system GMM dynami...

We analyze the impact of institutional quality on firm survival in 15 European emerging markets. We employ the Cox proportional hazards model with a large dataset of firms during 2006–2015. Our results show that institutional quality (IQ) is a significant preventive factor for firm survival, and it displays diminishing returns as its effect is largest for low-level IQ countries and smallest for high-level IQ countries. In terms of specific indicators, the level of national governance and the extent of corruption control exhibit the key impacts. In terms of firm-specific controls, indicators of ownership structure and aggregate financial performance are the economically most significant factors associated with increased survival probability of firms in European emerging markets.

This paper introduces the special issue titled “Meta-Analysis of Emerging Markets and Economies” of the Emerging Markets Finance & Trade journal. In addition, it briefly describes the procedure and...

Using a dataset of 126,591 service firms in 17 European emerging economies, this paper aims to estimate firm survivability in the years 2007–2015 and examine its determinants. We found that 31.3%, ...

This paper aims to perform a large-scale meta-analysis to examine the relationship between ownership concentration and firm performance in emerging economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the f...

This paper performs a meta-analysis of 1472 estimates extracted from 199 previous studies to investigate the gender wage gap in China. The results show that, although the gender wage gap in China during the transition period has an impact that statistically significant and economically meaningful, it remains at a low level. It is also revealed that the wage gap between men and women is more severe in rural regions and the private sector than those in urban regions and the public sector. Furthermore, we found that, in China, the gender wage gap has been increasing rapidly in recent years.

Chapter 2 deals with the “transition strategy debate.” The transition strategy debate involves policy arguments over what basic courses of action should be taken by the CEE and FSU countries that renounced the socialist planned economy as well as by countries, such as China and Cuba, which advocate radical reform of the economic structure while maintaining the one-party rule of the Communist Party, to establish a market-oriented system. This chapter presents an overview of the transition strategy debate by systematically reviewing 140 earlier works that contributed to the radicalism-versus-gradualism debate, which was the center of the transition strategy debate, and examines the relationship between debate attitudes and literature attributes by means of statistical and econometrical methods. The results of the literature survey in this chapter indicate that radicalists maintain a monolithic debate attitude, as a whole, while that of gradualists is more diversified. In fact, the latter can be divided into slow-paced gradualism, step-by-step gradualism, and eclectic gradualism groups, whose respective presences are almost balanced. There is also a group of researchers who take a middle ground between radicalism and gradualism, keeping their distance from these two extreme viewpoints but still participating in the radicalism-versus-gradualism debate. Furthermore, a cross-tabulation analysis and regression estimation of a qualitative selection model provide deep insight regarding the relationship between the debate attitudes and the literature attributes in related studies.

Chapter 9 performs a meta-analysis of foreign direct investment (FDI) in transition economies. Direct capital flows from abroad are expected not only to increase the financial source of investment for the former socialist countries but also to create the momentum to fundamentally reform their national economies, which were considerably less efficient than those in Western countries. To verify this prediction, many researchers intensively investigated the determinants and economic impacts of FDI in transition economies during the last three decades. As a result, there now exists a wealth of empirical literature on these topics that enables us to perform a meta-analysis. The first part of this chapter examines how transition-specific factors affect FDI in CEE and FSU countries. The latter part explores how large the impact of FDI on macroeconomic growth in the region is. The results of meta-analysis revealed that empirical results reported in previous studies present the close relationship between the progress in transition to a market economy and FDI and a positive effect of FDI on macroeconomic growth in the literature as a whole. This suggests that, in transition economies, the success of transformation towards a market-oriented system and foreign capital flow has created a kind of virtuous cycle.

Chapter 3 touches on macroeconomic dynamics in CEE and FSU countries during the transition period. Immediately after the collapse of socialism, these countries plunged into a serious economic crisis called the “transformational recession” (Kornai 1994) and then slowly recovered from it. In other words, all of these countries, without exception, followed a J-curved growth path. There were, however, considerable differences among these countries in terms of the depth and length of the crisis and the speed of economic recovery. To understand how the J-curved growth path occurred in the first place, this chapter performs a meta-analysis using 3,279 estimates extracted from 123 previous studies. The meta-synthesis of the extracted estimates revealed that, while the growth-enhancing effects of structural change and transformation policy were small yet significant, inflation and regional conflict had a highly significant and strongly negative effect on output. In addition, the legacy of socialism might exacerbate the decline in production in the early stages of transition. The meta-regression analysis that simultaneously controls for various research conditions and the assessment of publication selection bias provides supporting evidence for the results obtained from the meta-synthesis.

In this paper, we traced the survival status of 94,401 small businesses in 17 European emerging markets from 2007 to 2017 and empirically examined the determinants of their survival, focusing on institutional quality and financial development. We found that institutional quality and the level of financial development impact the survival probability of the researched SMEs in statistically significant and economically meaningful ways. The evidence holds even when we control for a set of firm-level characteristics such as ownership structure, financial performance, firm size, and age. The findings are also uniform across industries and country groups and robust beyond the difference in assumption of hazard distribution, firm size, region, and time period.

This paper performs a meta-analysis of the effect of financial development and liberalization on macroeconomic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean using a total of 233 estimates collected from 21 previous works. Meta-synthesis of the collected estimates demonstrates that it is probable that financial development and liberalization enhance economic growth in the region, and these policy measures have the potential to have a meaningful impact on the real economy. The synthesis results also reveal that the choice of financial variables significantly affects reported estimates in the literature. Meta-regression analysis of literature heterogeneity and test for publication selection bias produce findings that are compatible with the synthesis results. The test results of publication selection bias also confirm that the existing literature contains genuine empirical evidence of the growth-promoting effect of finance in the region.

Using a unique firm-level dataset obtained from a large-scale questionnaire survey conducted in late 2015, we examined the generality and heterogeneity of corporate governance systems between the e...

This paper provides a meta-analysis of studies on the effect of ownership on the performance of Russian firms over 20 years of rapid institutional and economic changes. We review 29 studies extract...

Immediately after the collapse of socialism, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union fell into a serious output decline, after which they experienced a gradual recovery. Therefore, without exception, these countries followed a J-curved growth path. However, there were marked differences among them in the length and depth of the output fall and the speed of recovery. In this paper, we perform a comparative meta-analysis of the effect size and statistical significance of structural change, transformation policy, the legacy of socialism, inflation, and regional conflict in order to elucidate the mechanism that generated the J-shaped trajectory in transition economies. The meta-synthesis, which employs 3279 estimates drawn from 123 previous studies, revealed that while the growth-enhancing effects of structural change and transformation policy were small yet significant, inflation and regional conflict had a highly significant and strongly negative effect on output. In addition, the legacy of socialism might exacerbate the decline in production in the early stages of transition. The meta-regression analysis that simultaneously controls for various research conditions and the assessment of publication selection bias provides supporting evidence for the results obtained from the meta-synthesis.