Cross‐border Small‐scale Trading in South‐Eastern Europe: Do Embeddedness and Social Capital Explain Enough?

Abstract

The article analyses cross-border small-scale trading (CBST) from the perspective of New Institutional Economics. It offers an alternative analytical starting point to this topic, which is mainly tackled by sociologists and anthropologists. It is argued that concepts like social capital or social embeddedness can be of certain analytical use but that they hardly suffice to explain human behaviour in a detailed manner. The case of reference is the institution of bribery as it evolved in the first half of the 1990s at the Bulgarian-Turkish border. Copyright (c) 2006 The Author. Journal Compilation (c) 2006 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Export experience and financial performance of small and medium enterprises

“…Doing business in a foreign market tends to increase risks. Exporting, especially by SMEs, is a risky business, since in many countries, formal institutions which protect import/exports are often non-existent (Egbert, 2006). As argued by Esteve-PeRez, Requena-Silvente and PallardoLopez (2013), export survival analysis is useful to better understand firms' export performance in order to come up with adequate export-promotion policies and interventions.…”

Export experience and key success factors in cross-border trade: Evidence from Southern Africa

“…Cross-border trading is a risky entrepreneurial endeavour because quite often the traders are operating illegally (Egbert 2006). Therefore, the traders lack formal protection because of the nature of their operations.…”

“…Therefore, the traders lack formal protection because of the nature of their operations. Therefore, they become prone to exploitation by untrustworthy officials and business partners (Egbert 2006). All factors that constrain enterprises to organise and sustain operations in the external market are considered trade barriers (Leonidou 2004).…”

“…For example, though CBT in Central Europe decreased at the end of the 1990s when these countries joined the European Union, in South-Eastern Europe and Central Asian countries it is still a prominent pattern of entrepreneurship (Egbert 2006). Egbert (2006:348) refers to CBT as a 'mass phenomenon', which, though well researched or analysed by anthropologists and sociologists is largely ignored by economists and entrepreneurship researchers (Bernard et al 2003).…”

Human Values and the Market: The Case of Life Insurance and Death in 19th-Century America (translated by E. Berdysheva)

“…В-третьих, неоинституциональный социологический подход, делающий акцент на укоренённость коррупционной деятельности, на то, что она включена в соответствующие социальные сети [Sobel 2002;Egbert 2006].…”