Institutions, and their underlying rules, are essential for economic development, in that they provide a framework for markets to operate. However, different types of regulatory roles and even institutional settings may have very different effects on outcomes at the firm or individual level. This dissertation examines the effect of several types of rules and institutions on productivity and related measures. The first chapter examines the effect of international competition and domestic competitive barriers on firm-level productivity growth in the OECD. A close interaction is observed between import penetration and domestic barriers to entry, conditional on a firm's distance to the technological frontier. The second chapter examines the effects of labor market reform on plants in different Indian states. A positive effect of labor market reform is found on plant-level productivity growth in labor-intensive and volatile industries. The third chapter looks at Indian exporters who took advantage of capital account liberalization to invest abroad, and explores whether they gained through learning-by-doing. After matching these firms with similar firms that did not invest abroad, the chapter finds that productivity was not boosted, though firms did gain in terms of their overall size through market access. The fourth chapter explores how the legal system in different Mexican states has impacted the size of firms through heightened capital intensity. States with higher quality legal institutions are found to have systematically larger and more productive firms.
Regulation and trade in development : explaining productivity at the firm level