Congratulations to Linda Stretz, who had her viva on Friday, 31 March and was awarded the PhD subject to minor revisions. Congratulations also to Linda’s supervisors, Dr Chay Brooks and Dr David Littlewood, for their great work and support.
Linda’s thesis studied the role of formal and informal institutions in boosting firms' export performance. By using a pragmatic approach to research, combining data from three sequential stages in a mixed methods design, bringing together two stages of qualitative methods and one large-scale survey, Linda’s thesis extends the debates on formal and informal institutions and contributes to the institutional approaches to the questions of firms’ export performance in newborn states and post-conflict economies. The multi-phase research helped give stronger evidence and confidence in the findings on how the institutional environment affects the export performance, finding the perception of corruption creating a negative image of the country, the weak rule of law, unskilled labour force, and the limited access to finance are crucial factors inhibiting the growth of Kosovo firms and their exporting possibilities. Rather than adopting existing successful legislations and reforms, country specific reforms are required, considering multi-faceted interventions and the informal institutions of the country.
