International trade and foreign direct investment as growth stimulators in transition economies: does the impact of institutional factors matter?

The present paper develops a general production function framework, augmented with two institutional variables namely bureaucracy and corruption on 28 transition economies over the period 2000-2015. The authors use various econometric specifications and apply both the Fixed Effects, as well as the advanced system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) panel data techniques. Empirical findings suggest that the impact of openness in terms of foreign direct investment and international trade is advantageous to all the economies of the panel. Furthermore, the findings indicate that classical growth determinants, such as labor and physical capital, have the expected positive contribution, while macroeconomic instability has a negative effect on real economic activity. Regarding the impact of the two institutional variables, corruption, and bureaucracy, the authors retrieve more influential results, as their impact appears to be diametrically opposite between the former Soviet Union states and the rest of European transition economics.