Using a unique dataset of 730 joint-stock companies, we studied the determinants of corporate board composition in Russia. Despite the widespread image of insider control in the 1990s, a large number of Russian companies now actively appoint outsider directors to monitor top management. The findings reported in this paper strongly suggest that the theories and empirical methods of financial and organizational economics help to pinpoint the factors affecting the extent of outsider directorship. We also found that, among potential determinants, bargaining variables have considerable explanatory power. Furthermore, our empirical evidence demonstrated that Russia's legal system and its peculiarities as a transition economy also exert a certain degree of influence on board composition.

We analyze the impact of institutional quality on firm survival in 15 European emerging markets. We employ the Cox proportional hazards model with a large dataset of firms during 2006–2015. Our results show that institutional quality (IQ) is a significant preventive factor for firm survival, and it displays diminishing returns as its effect is largest for low-level IQ countries and smallest for high-level IQ countries. In terms of specific indicators, the level of national governance and the extent of corruption control exhibit the key impacts. In terms of firm-specific controls, indicators of ownership structure and aggregate financial performance are the economically most significant factors associated with increased survival probability of firms in European emerging markets.