Research

Abstract: This paper introduces production complexity, the capabilities required to produce a firm's products, as a fundamental determinant of firm-state relations. As complexity increases, the asymmetry in technical expertise between firm and state widens, raising the cost of regulatory enforcement. The protective effect of complexity, however, is moderated by bureaucrats’ technical capacity. I formalize this argument and then empirically test these predictions using firm-level data from Vietnam and interviews in Vietnam and China. In Vietnam, higher complexity decreases enforcement. Interviews confirm the causal mechanism: Vietnamese bureaucrats lack the expertise to enforce regulation on complex firms, while Chinese bureaucrats have sufficient technical capacity to overcome firm complexity. These findings demonstrate that production complexity shields firms from regulation when bureaucrats’ technical capacity is constrained, and suggest that firms' production decisions have consequences both for firms' political power and states' capacity.

Abstract: Conventional wisdom suggests that firms benefit from commenting on draft regulations and are likely to do so when given the opportunity. Policymakers tend to rely on information from firms to craft effective policy, meaning that firms can shape regulations by engaging in the policymaking process. However, these expectations of firms’ willingness to comment on regulations are largely based on developed country contexts. In developing countries, where bureaucratic capacity tends to be lower, firms producing complex products often rely on bureaucrats’ lack of understanding of their business to avoid regulations. We argue that in these contexts, complex firms may benefit more from withholding information than from commenting on regulations. We first test this theory in Vietnam, leveraging both an experiment on regulatory commenting by Malesky and Taussig (2019) and firm-level cross-sectional data. We then confirm that the results generalize cross-nationally with firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys. Across these empirical tests, firms producing more complex products are consistently less likely to comment on proposed regulations. These findings suggest that, contrary to prevailing expectations, firms may stay strategically silent about proposed regulations, in order to benefit from policymakers’ lack of knowledge of their business. Our results contribute to our understanding of firms' non-market strategies in the Global South and the data generating process of firm engagement in public commenting.

Abstract: Women having a source of income is considered a key pathway to increased female empowerment both privately and publicly. Income gives women resources that can be invested in political action; income also increases women’s intrahousehold bargaining power, and this private empowerment then increases their public empowerment. However, financial control over that income is vital for either of these pathways to lead to women’s empowerment, and is an assumption that is often overlooked in the literature. Given that women often do not retain control over their income, how might personal finance products affect women’s empowerment? This paper explores the effect of financial products on women’s empowerment among women with sources of income by examining alternate outcome measures from two experiments that provided women with financial products. I find that among women with sources of income, provision of financial products increases women’s public empowerment in terms of freedom of movement and access to information. Contrary to my expectations, financial products did not increase women’s inclusion in household spending decisions. This research contributes by combining two strands of literature: the effect of income on women’s empowerment and the effect of financial control on women’s empowerment.