Innovation Decisions in Uncertain Business Environments of CEE Countries

Innovation Decisions in Uncertain Business Environments of CEE Countries Corporate innovations are a central part of a country’s economic activity. They foster and improve competitiveness, which ultimately leads to economic growth and progress. In this study, we focus on the post-communist European region, where corporations operate under uncertain conditions. Utilizing a sample with almost 100,000 firm level observations over the period from 2001 to 2013, we analyse effects of uncertainty steaming from corruption environment on innovation decisions of the Central European private firms. We find that domestic firms and firms with dispersed ownership innovate less when business and municipal uncertainty conditions increase. When firms are unsure whether they will be blocked by local bureaucrats from capitalizing on their innovation, they scale down their efforts. However, this result disappears for firms with foreign majority ownership. We hypothesize that foreign controlled firms have cleared all uncertainties before they entered the foreign market.