Published Articles in Peer-reviewed Journals:
Ashyrov, G., & Ivanov, D. (2023). Mega‐events and human rights violations: Empirical evidence from the long‐term perspective. Scottish Journal of Political Economy.
As developing countries have started to host the mega‐events (e.g., FIFA, Olympics), the focus has shifted toward the human rights conditions in the host country rather than the competition itself. Up to now, far too little attention has been paid to the impact of mega‐events on human rights. This study aims to fill that gap by examining the relationship between mega‐events and human rights violations in hosting countries. By applying panel data techniques to a rich dataset, we find that hosting mega‐events has a positive impact on human rights. These findings remain statistically significant after several different specifications.
Tasane, H., Ashyrov, G., & Srun, S. (2023). Institutions and R&D engagement of SMEs in Laos. Post-Communist Economies, 35(4), 384-402.
We investigate the association between research and development (R&D) engagement by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the institutional environment in Laos. We employed multivariate imputation by chained equations and full Bayesian inference to analyse data from the 2016 and 2018 World Bank Enterprise Surveys for Laos. Our findings show that Lao SMEs that engage in R&D are likely to experience more frequent tax inspections and more solicitation of bribes by government authorities, than Lao SMEs that do not engage in R&D. Firms that perceive political uncertainty as an obstacle to doing business are 28% less likely to engage in R&D activities. These findings raise concerns about the effectiveness of institutions in supporting intellectual property rights in Laos, and have policy implications for promoting productivity of small and medium-sized firms.
Ashyrov, G., & Lukason, O. (2022). Political Connectedness and Financial Performance of SMEs. Journal of Risk and Financial Management, 15(12), 600.
The extant literature on the association of political connectedness and performance of large firms has led to controversial results, while the context of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has largely been overlooked in relevant studies. To resolve these gaps, the objective of this paper is to study the link between the political connections of firm board members and financial performance in the Estonian SME population. Using a wide selection of financial performance and political connectedness variables, the composed regressions indicated that firms with politically connected boards underperform their unconnected counterparts. The findings remained robust not only through different measures of dependent and independent variables, but also periods studied.
Aghazada, E., & Ashyrov, G. (2022). Role of institutions in the corruption and firm innovation nexus: evidence from former Soviet Union countries. Post-Communist Economies, 34(6), 779-806.
In view of the missing consensus on how corruption relates to firm innovation, this paper empirically studies the relationship between petty corruption and product, process, marketing and organisational innovations in the former Soviet Union region. Exploiting cross-sectional firm-level data from the fifth round of the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey, the paper argues that institutional context has utmost importance when approaching this link. Probit estimations for a full sample of former Soviet Union countries indicate a positive link between bribes and firm innovation. Considering variations in institutional development levels, the paper distinguishes three clusters of countries within the region with respect to the quality of institutional structures based on Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) data from the World Bank. The results reveal that the grease-the-wheel effect of bribery on firm innovation strongly remains in countries with weak institutional quality. To explore this link further, this paper made several additional estimations and robustness checks.
Andriani, L., & Ashyrov, G. (2022). Corruption and life satisfaction: Evidence from a transition survey. Kyklos, 75(4), 511-535.
Fighting corruption cannot lie exclusively on appropriate formal institutions. It also requires social support and public engagement. Particularly in countries under institutional and economic transition. We embrace the recent perspective arguing that higher quality of life conditions makes people better citizens, more civically committed and more conformed to institutional rules. Accordingly, we study whether life satisfaction is a predictor of individuals' corruption aversion across 28 former socialist countries from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. We use data from the third wave of the Life in Transition Survey (2015–2016). 2SLS estimations suggest that individuals reporting higher scores of life satisfaction are more averse to corruption. Our results are robust to a series of sensitivity analyses. Additionally, we estimate predicted values of corruption aversion for different levels of institutional trust across low and high life satisfaction groups. We find that when institutional trust is very low, its impact on corruption aversion does not differ between life satisfaction groups. As institutional trust increases so does corruption aversion and this occurs even more amongst the group of respondents with high life satisfaction.
Jaakson, K., & Ashyrov, G. (2022). Happy to Be a Boss? Cultural Moderators of Relationships Between Supervisory Responsibility and Job Satisfaction. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 868910.
This paper addresses whether supervisory responsibility is a challenging job demand in the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model in different cultural contexts. We investigate how job satisfaction responds to a supervisory role with job control and selected cultural dimensions using a cross-cultural dataset of 14 countries with more than 43,000 adults using ordered logit regression models. We find that a supervisory role enhances job satisfaction and appears to be a challenging job demand. However, no studied cultural dimension, masculinity, power distance, individualism, or uncertainty avoidance, increases job satisfaction derived from this kind of responsibility. Our study indicates that there might be stereotypical assumptions about cultural dimensions concerning the job satisfaction of supervisors.
Ashyrov, G., & Masso, J. (2020). Does corruption affect local and foreign-owned companies differently? Evidence from the BEEPS survey. Post-Communist Economies, 32(3), 306-329.
Until recently, studies have not reached any general agreement on how a corrupt environment influences foreign investments. Furthermore, far too little attention has so far been paid to how corruption relates to the performance of foreign and domestically owned firms. This paper exploits cross-sectional firm-level data from the fifth round of the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS V) for the purpose of investigating how bribery is associated with FDI and firm performance. By using various econometric estimation strategies, we find that foreign owned firms tend to pay larger bribes compared to domestically owned firms, while the negative size of bribe expenses on firm productivity is larger for foreign owned firms than domestically owned firms in highly corrupt countries. This study suggests that developing countries should fight against informal payments in bureaucracy to create corruption free environments, so that multinationals are incentivized to invest in their countries.
Ashyrov, G., & Akuffo, I. N. (2020). Dimension of corruption and firm performance: an empirical analysis from BEEPS survey. International Journal of Social Economics, 47(3), 384-403.
The link between corruption and firm performance has received considerable critical attention. However, until now, far too little attention has been paid to different dimensions of corruption and their relationship with firm performance. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to examine the relationship between dimensions of corruption and firm productivity. This paper uses the fifth wave of Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey, which is based on the survey questionnaire with senior managers of 16,566 randomly selected firms across 32 developing countries. Empirical analysis employs structural equation modeling (SEM) and instrumental variable two-stage least square (IV 2SLS) estimation techniques. Our results revealed that political corruption and red tape have a positive relationship with firm productivity. We also found that perceived extent of bribe and corruption experience are positively related to the firm productivity. Findings suggest that multifaceted dimensions of corruption exist. Therefore, policymakers should develop anticorruption measures by taking into account these dimensions. In addition, policymakers should focus on improving institutional quality by reforming laws and measures to detect and punish government officials. So far only few studies have looked at the dimensions of corruption; therefore, this study seeks to examine the effect of different dimensions of corruption together on firm performance in postcommunist countries.
Ashyrov, G. (2020), "Role of managerial traits in firm-level corruption: evidence from Vietnam", Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, Vol. 27 No. 1, pp. 52-72. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSBED-01-2019-0019
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine the link between behavioural and personality traits of firm representatives and bribery in the case study of Vietnam; second, to study whether corruption is associated to firm performance through managers’ personality traits. This study uses novel data from micro, small and medium firms in Vietnam for investigating the relationship between behavioural and personality traits of representatives of firms and bribery. Stratified sampling method is employed to ensure an adequate number of firms in each province with different ownership types. Ordinary least squares and logistic estimation techniques are used in this analysis.This paper finds that traits of risk loving and innovativeness are positively associated to the likelihood of paying bribe whereas managers’ internal locus of control is negatively related to the probability of paying bribe. This paper reveals that managers, who have risk loving characteristics and get engaged to bribe payments, are related to lower firm performances. Despite the fact that this paper provides robust and statistically significant empirical analysis, results from this paper are constrained with use of cross-sectional survey data, which has been conducted in 2015. Although this paper can provide strong correlations, it does not establish causal linkages and one should therefore be careful in interpreting the observed patterns as causal impacts. The role of managerial personality traits in corruption interactions has not yet been explicitly proposed and empirically investigated. This paper attempts to fill this void by examining the relationship between managerial traits and corruption tendencies among SMEs in Vietnam.
Ashyrov, G., Alunurm, R., Pentus, K., & Vadi, M. (2019). The future of university–industry collaboration: scenario analysis based on case of Estonia. Knowledge Management Research & Practice, 17(4), 421-435.
Rapidly evolving technological solutions and the demand for them are forcing industries to become more knowledge-intensive. Developed countries have mostly embraced this idea and are aiming to establish a knowledge-intensive economy (KIE). However, such a direction requires considerable accumulation of knowledge, which is why knowledge transfer and university–industry (U-I) collaboration is seen as a critical premise for success. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, to forecast the future of the KIE via scenario analysis, where U-I collaboration is a dominant practice. Second, to use this forecast as a basis for providing policy suggestions. The results imply that sustaining free-market competition is one of the crucial elements of the legislative framework that would support the development of a technology dependent society as is a sustainable knowledge transfer system via U-I collaboration.
Jaakson, K., Johannsen, L., Pedersen, K. H., Vadi, M., Ashyrov, G., Reino, A., & Sööt, M. L. (2019). The role of costs, benefits, and moral judgments in private-to-private corruption. Crime, Law and Social Change, 71, 83-106.
Private-to-private corruption has no direct victim and is therefore difficult to combat. Yet it undermines market competition, impedes growth, and sets development at risk. Therefore, knowledge about the reasons for committing crimes is necessary for changing corrupt practices within private sector. This article explores business managers’ perceptions of the extent of bribing within their lines of business and possible explanations for these perceptions. We analyze a survey of 1000 managers of private companies in Denmark and Estonia using structural equation models. Comparing two behavioral causes for bribes, a rational choice theory and a cognitivist theory of action, which adds moral judgment to instrumental rationality, we find that managers find corruption less common when they see it as a breach of their own moral judgment. Costs of bribing do not matter and benefits from bribing play a marginal role in the perceived extent of bribing. Context is also important: managers in Denmark and outside capital cities in both countries deem bribing less common and this is not because they are personally less tolerant of bribing. The implication of this study is that fostering condemnatory attitudes toward private-to-private corruption should be a standard act in combating this form of corporate crime.
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