Exploring the Social Impact of Foreign Direct Investment on Institutional Change: The Case of Russia

Despite the vast and growing literature on the economic impact of foreign direct investment (FDI), its social significance is somewhat a neglected issue. Focusing on Russia, this chapter examines the effect of FDI and (formal) institutions (proxied, alternatively, by the [1] accumulated stock of small and medium sized firms or SMEs and [2] number of economic crimes per 100,000 population or corruption) on (informal) institutional change (proxied by the change in the number of violent and property crimes per 100,000 population). The empirical findings provide robust support for a significantly positive direct impact of SMEs, whilst observing a significantly negative effect of corruption and either significantly positive impact of FDI or insignificant effect of multinational firms in this context.