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This dissertation explores the impact of legal and institutional factors on the development of securities and banking markets in transition economies, and on flows of foreign direct investment into the same. Chapter 1 introduces the main questions the dissertation seeks to address and identifies the topic of each chapter. Chapter 2 presents the methodology, and focuses on the 1999 EBRD Legal Indicator Survey, which provided the data on securities and banking laws, and contract enforcement. It presents background information on the use of surveys in economics, and the economic rationale for attaching weights to the survey questions. Chapter 3 studies the impact of securities laws on several measures of securities market development, and finds that stricter regulation of financial disclosure and market intermediaries raise stock market capitalisation and turnover. The enforcement of disclosure and regulation of intermediaries drives this result. Chapter 4 studies the impact of banking law and its perceived enforcement upon banking development. It establishes that legal indices on information disclosure by banks, such as use of external auditors, and consolidated supervisory examinations of banks, raise private credit, and foreign bank entry. Fewer legal restrictions on foreign ownership of domestic banks are also associated with a more developed banking industry. Chapter 5 examines the relevance of the contract enforcement environment for flows of foreign direct investment, and establishes that foreign investors are attracted to locations, with a transparent legislative process and dissemination of new laws, and which protect litigants' rights of appeal and judicial review of government decisions. FDI is higher in countries with higher confidence in the courts to resolve disputes with the government, but not so in countries with higher confidence in the courts to resolve disputes with private parties. Finally, Chapter 6 summarises the main results, and offers policy implications and guidelines for future research.

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Les économies dites "en transition", ayant émergé après la chute du mur de Berlin, ont disparu depuis plus d’une vingtaine d’années. Dans ces "nouvelles" économies de marché, l’accumulation de compétences et connaissances formant un "réservoir" de ressources organisationnelles et cognitives est répartie suivant une polarisation territoriale étroitement liée à l’histoire locale. En proposant, dans ce travail de recherche, le concept de "pôle territorial d’innovation", l’objectif était de formuler un outil conceptuel à l’attention des décideurs publics pour renforcer l’architecture productive des territoires. La politique des "clusters territoriaux d’innovation" a été initiée en 2012 dans 25 territoires de Russie avec pour objectif de moderniser une pluralité de systèmes productifs locaux. En prenant comme objet d’étude empirique les territoires de Novossibirsk et Tomsk en Sibérie occidentale (Russie), il est possible de constater que si les "clusters territoriaux d’innovation" de Novossibirsk et Tomsk ont initialement favorisé un processus de gouvernance locale intégrant la majorité des acteurs ou de groupes d’acteurs territoriaux locaux (pouvant contribuer à l’émergence de dynamiques d’innovation), l’État russe a par la suite imposé unilatéralement des changements décisifs dans l’organisation du développement territorial (renforçant les phénomènes de "lock-in"). Dans ce contexte, le potentiel des territoires de Novossibirsk et Tomsk à générer l’émergence des "pôles territoriaux d’innovation", s’il a été mis en évidence dans ce travail de recherche, n’a pas été valorisé par l’intégration de "clusters territoriaux d’innovation aux territoires. / The so-called "transitional economies" that emerged after the fall of the Berlin Wall disappeared for over twenty years ago. In these "new" market economies, the accumulation of skills and knowledge creating a "reservoir" of organizational and cognitive resources is spreading following a territorial polarization closely related to the local history. By proposing, in this research, the concept of "territorial innovation cluster", the main is to create a conceptual tool for the policy makers to strengthen the productive architecture of territories. The policy of the "territorial clusters of innovation" was initiated in 2012 in 25 territories of Russia aiming at modernizing a plurality of local production systems. Studying empirically the territories of Novosibirsk and Tomsk in Western Siberia (Russia), it is possible to affirm that the "territorial clusters of innovation" of Novosibirsk and Tomsk initially created local governance including the majority of localized actors or groups of actors (which may contribute to the emergence of innovation dynamics). However, later on the Russian State imposed, unilaterally, important changes in the territorial organization (strengthening the phenomena of "lock-in"). In this context, the potential of Novosibirsk and Tomsk territories to initiate the emergence of "territorial clusters of innovation" has not been enhanced through the integration of "territorial clusters of innovation" to the territories.

Since Vladimir Putin first became Russia’s President in 2000, the state has played an increasingly active and interventionist role in the economy, including through its involvement in a large number of coercive takeovers of privately-owned businesses. The best known case is the Yukos affair, but there have been many other, less prominent takeovers. These have largely been explained as predatory acts by state officials seeking to enrich themselves or increase their power. This has contributed to the perception that Putin’s Russia is a kleptocracy, with the state given free rein to engage in economically-destructive attacks on property rights. This thesis studies a number of state-led coercive takeovers in Putin’s Russia, including the Yukos affair, and argues that they cannot be explained as predatory acts initiated by rent-seeking state officials. Instead, they were the work of state officials attempting to pursue economic development while countering perceived threats to state sovereignty. The Yukos affair resulted in the company’s de facto nationalisation and heralded a broader trend of expanding state ownership in the economy. But two other coercive takeovers studied here instead resulted in the companies being transferred to new private owners. In other cases where nationalisation was the clear goal, the state-owned companies who emerged as buyers chose indirect forms of ownership over their new assets. The varying ownership outcomes are found to have been determined by institutional factors which constrained the behaviour of the state, contributing to its preference for takeovers that were negotiated rather than entirely coercive, and turning each case into a bargaining game between state and targeted business owner. Thus Russia is some way from kleptocracy, not only because of the developmental aspirations of its political leadership, but also thanks to partial progress towards institutional checks on arbitrary state coercion.