Companies’ Access to Finance, Co-operative Industrial Relations, and Economic Growth: A Comparative Analysis of the States of South Eastern Europe

This paper examines the links between corporate funding, co-operative industrial relations, and wage flexibility, on the one hand, and economic growth, on the other, in 11 countries in South Eastern Europe. These links have been downplayed in previous research. The paper draws on the most comprehensive and extensive dataset on these issues for the whole of the region. Previous research has focused on a selection of these countries. The paper uses a novel analytical technique, fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, to examine these possible associations. It finds that wage flexibility and co-operative labour relations can promote growth; the availability of different forms of domestic funding for firms does not. The findings indicate that policy makers may focus their efforts on promoting wage flexibility within a consensual industrial labour system if they wish to foster economic growth.