An investigation on the impact of institutional environment on firm growth in Vietnam. This paper investigates the impact of the institutional environment on firm growth in Vietnam. Using a firm-level dataset, the study obtains balanced panel data for 37,788 registered enterprises from a unique data set. | Journal of Economics and Development, , , August 2016, pp. 19-35 ISSN 1859 0020 An Investigation on The Impact of Institutional Environment on Firm Growth in Vietnam Ha Van Dung Banking University, Hochiminh city, Vietnam Emai: djunghv@ Abstract This paper investigates the impact of the institutional environment on firm growth in Vietnam. Using a firm-level dataset, the study obtains balanced panel data for 37,788 registered enterprises from a unique data set. It analyzes the effects of institutional factors on firm growth using system GMM analysis. The study finds that in line with recent theoretical literature, institutional factors such as business support service, land access, time costs, and informal charges promote firm growth in terms of both employment and capital. This research also finds that the impact of institutional factors on firms’ capital growth is more significant. Keywords: Firm growth; institutional factors; capital structure. Journal of Economics and Development 19 Vol. 18, , August 2016 1. Introduction tional quality on firm success in a low-income, infant market economy like that of Vietnam. With rich firm-level data from a yearly census covering over 233,000 enterprises in 2009 the study obtains a balanced set of panel data from 2006 to 2009 for 37,788 registered enterprises, giving us a unique data set which has not been explored before. When countries try to develop a market economy, entrepreneurship is a core element, hence many studies have focused on entrepreneurship in developed and transitional countries (Burke et al., 2000; Honjo and Harada, 2006; Dunne et al., 1989; Dunne and Hughes, 1994; Liu et al., 1999; Praag, 2006; Park et al., 2010; Reichstein and Dahl, 2004; Tomczyk et al., 2013; Yusada, 2005). However, concerning developing countries and countries at an early stage of development we still do not know much about entrepreneurship. It remains unclear what fosters firms and firm growth in these .
