The Births, Lives and Deaths of Corporations in Late Imperial Russia

Abstract

Enterprise creation, destruction and evolution support the transition to modern economic growth, yet these processes are poorly understood in industrializing contexts. We investigate Imperial Russia's industrial development at the firm-level by examining entry, exit and persistence of corporations. Relying on newly developed balance sheet panel data from every non-financial Russian corporation (more than 2500 of them) between 1899 and 1914, we examine the characteristics of entering and exiting corporations, how new entrants evolved and the impact of founder identity on subsequent outcomes. Russian corporations evolved within a market environment, conditional on overcoming distortionary institutional barriers to entry that slowed the emergence of these leading firms in the Imperial economy.