DP2888 Competition, Corporate Governance: Substitutes or Complements? Evidence from the Warsaw Stock Exchange

Author(s): Irena Grosfeld , Thierry Tressel

Publication Date: July 2001

Keyword(s): Competition , Corporate Governance , productivity growth

JEL(s): D24 , G32 , L10 , P20

Programme Areas: Transition Economics

Link to this Page: www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP2888.asp

In this Paper we analyse the impact of product market competition and ownership structure on corporate performance. We focus on the firms listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, which are either privatised or newly created firms. First, we study the separate effects of competition and ownership concentration on firm level productivity growth. Next, we investigate their interaction: are they substitutes or complements? We take care of the crucial problem of potential endogeneity of explanatory variables by using GMM estimators proposed by Arellano and Bond (1991). We also control for several types of selection bias that could affect the productivity levels and productivity growth. Our results show that product market competition has a positive and significant impact on performance. Concerning the effect of ownership concentration, we find a U-shaped relationship with performance. Firms with relatively dispersed and relatively concentrated ownership have higher productivity growth than firms with an intermediate level of ownership concentration. This correlation between concentration of ownership and productivity growth is not explained by the type of the controlling shareholder. Finally, product market competition and good governance tend to reinforce each other rather than act as substitutes. Competition has no significant effect on performance for the firms with 'poor' governance; on the contrary, it has a significant positive effect in the case of firms with 'good' corporate governance.