INNOVATORS’ VS. NON-INOVATORS’ PERCEPTIONS OF CORRUPTION IN EUROPEAN POST-TRANSITION ECONOMIES

Sa？etak Post-transition countries struggle with their attempt to catch-up more advanced market economies with more or less success. Innovation activities have been emphasized as one of the most important factors for achieving sustainable growth. At the same time, innovation indicators in post-transition countries significantly lag behind the desired levels. According to the Innovation Union Scoreboard 2014, post-transition EU countries are mainly modest and moderate innovators. Only Estonia and Slovenia are classified among innovation followers. Various measurements of shadow economy usually reveal that its size is more pronounced in the catching-up countries. Since shadow economy and corruption can be perceived as major obstacle for doing business, we analyse whether innovators perceive this impediment to be systematically more important than non-innovators across different post-transition EU countries. We expect that perception of corruption as an obstacle to business operations among innovators will be lower in post-transition countries that perform better in terms of innovation. The results imply that there is a link between innovation activity of the firms, perceptions of corruption and the evaluation of innovation enabling specificities in the analysed countries. Thus, in order to boost innovation, not only traditional innovation-supporting policy measures should be considered, but also wider spectrum of activities oriented towards business climate improvement