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Democratization and Firm Innovation: Evidence from European and Central Asian post-Communist States

ABSTRACT The paper analyses the impact of democratisation on firm innovation in European and Central Asian post-communist states using panel-data and cross-sectional approaches. The sample consists of over 25,000 establishments in 25 transition economies. Our empirical analysis provides an array of novel findings to the institutional literature. First, our analysis demonstrates that post-communist democratisation has had a direct impact on firms’ propensity to innovate across transition economies. Second, we find that the relationship between the level of democracy and firm innovation takes the form of a U-shape or inverted U-shape depending on the definition of firm innovation. That is, the states with the lowest and highest levels of democracy exhibit less firm innovation than states with intermediate levels of democracy. The paper contributes to the institutional literature and to studies on the consequences of post-communist regime transition for economic development.