Family firms, political connections, and R&D activities in Eastern European Countries

Mariarosaria Agostino (), Cristiana Donati () and Sabrina Ruberto ()
Additional contact information
Mariarosaria Agostino: University of Calabria
Cristiana Donati: University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli
Sabrina Ruberto: University of Naples L’Orientale

Empirica, 2023, vol. 50, issue 3, No 5, 725-754

Abstract: Abstract Although R&D activities can be effective means for firms to develop their innovation capacity, the current understanding of which informal institutions affect firms’ propensity to invest in R&D remains limited, especially in emerging and less-developed countries. Using a large sample of transition countries, this work investigates whether family ownership and political connections influence the firm’s propensity to invest in R&D, as well as in a specific type of open innovation (OI) strategy (i.e. performing simultaneously internal and external R&D activities). According to our evidence, both informal institutions seem encouraging firms to invest in R&D. Moreover, family and political connections appear increasing the engagement in the aforementioned OI strategy. Finally, the two kinds of networks seem to substitute each other in boosting the probability of investing in internal and external R&D activities.

Keywords: Family firms; Political connections; Internal and external R&D activities; Transition countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C25 L26 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10663-023-09568-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:empiri:v:50:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s10663-023-09568-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ration/journal/10663

DOI: 10.1007/s10663-023-09568-x

Access Statistics for this article

Empirica is currently edited by Fritz Breuss and Fritz Breuss

More articles in Empirica from Springer, Austrian Institute for Economic Research, Austrian Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().