Introduction

I conducted surveys of firm managers in 2000, 2005, 2008, and 2011. Before reporting the details and descriptive statistics from each survey, I note several commonalities across the four surveys. Full data, original questions, and replication data are available at the Harvard Dataverse and on my personal webpage, www.TimothyFrye.com

In each survey, interviewers spoke with respondents face to face in the place of work of the respondents. Chief executive officers, chief financial officers, and chief legal officers were included as potential respondents and interviewers spoke with only one person per firm. The surveys included firms from 22 to 24 different economic sectors as categorized by the State Statistical Agency and ranged from industrial giants in metals and energy to retail trading firms. The samples excluded firms in agriculture, communal services, and health and social services. Firms were chosen using stratified random sampling. Researchers stratified the sample by firm size and sector to mirror the population of firms in each region and firms were selected at random from within each of the strata. Each firm within each stratum had an equal probability of being included in the sample. In all surveys, the survey company called back at least 20 percent of respondents to ensure consistency with reported data. In each of the four surveys, firms were based in Moscow, Voronezh, Nizhnii Novgorod, Ekaterinburg, Smolensk, Ufa, Tula, and Novgorod. In 2005 and 2011, I added to the sample three and seven regions, respectively. All interviews were done in the capital city of each region. For each survey, I provide details on the field work, descriptive statistics of managers, firms, and variables used in the analyses.

Firm Survey 2000: Used Briefly in Chapter 4

On my behalf, the Levada Center (then known as VCIOM) conducted a survey of businesspeople from October 10 to November 23, 2000. The response rate among managers contacted was 56 percent. The lowest response rate was in Smolensk at 44 percent and in four regions the response rate was over 70 percent.

Firm Survey 2005: Data from Chapters 4 and 5

I commissioned a survey of 666 managers in 11 of Russia's (then) 89 regions to address these and other questions. Interviewers from the Levada Center spoke face to face with managers in January and February 2005. Regions included the original eight, plus Khabarovsk, Omsk, and Rostov.