TY - JOUR
T1 - Just a Piece of Paper? Domestic Standards Certification and Small Firm Growth in Viet Nam
AU - Calza, E.
AU - Goedhuys, M.
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to Pierre Mohnen, Neda Trifkovi?, Neil Foster-McGregor, and two anonymous referees for their insightful comments and advice. We thank the participants of the 10th Micro Evidence on Innovation and Development (MEIDE) Conference and the participants of the UNU-MERIT seminars for their feedback. Financial support of the European Union?s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sk?odowska-Curie grant agreement No 778398 is gratefully acknowledged. We also thank UNU-WIDER for granting access to the data. The raw data are made available by UNU-WIDER at: https://www.wider.unu.edu/database/viet-nam-sme-database. The do-files with the data preparation and empirical analysis are available from the authors upon request.
Funding Information:
We are grateful to Pierre Mohnen, Neda Trifković, Neil Foster-McGregor, and two anonymous referees for their insightful comments and advice. We thank the participants of the 10th Micro Evidence on Innovation and Development (MEIDE) Conference and the participants of the UNU-MERIT seminars for their feedback. Financial support of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 778398 is gratefully acknowledged.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2021/8/3
Y1 - 2021/8/3
N2 - Using two waves (2013, 2015) of the Micro, Small, and Medium sized Enterprises (MSMEs) survey of Vietnamese manufacturing firms, this paper first explores what drives firms’ decision to have a domestic standards certificate, taking into account a rich number of factors related to the cost and expected benefits of certification as well as institutional factors. It further explores the presence of a positive and significant effect of domestic certificates on firm growth, testing whether these serve as signalling devices for desirable attributes under information asymmetry. Evidence is indeed found for a signalling effect of domestic standards certification, being stronger for female-run businesses. Results hold even when controlling for international certifications.
AB - Using two waves (2013, 2015) of the Micro, Small, and Medium sized Enterprises (MSMEs) survey of Vietnamese manufacturing firms, this paper first explores what drives firms’ decision to have a domestic standards certificate, taking into account a rich number of factors related to the cost and expected benefits of certification as well as institutional factors. It further explores the presence of a positive and significant effect of domestic certificates on firm growth, testing whether these serve as signalling devices for desirable attributes under information asymmetry. Evidence is indeed found for a signalling effect of domestic standards certification, being stronger for female-run businesses. Results hold even when controlling for international certifications.
U2 - 10.1080/00220388.2021.1873289
DO - 10.1080/00220388.2021.1873289
M3 - Article
SN - 0022-0388
VL - 57
SP - 1351
EP - 1372
JO - Journal of Development Studies
JF - Journal of Development Studies
IS - 8
ER -