Investimentos e desempenho econômico das organizações do agronegócio: uma abordagem das interações entre o ambiente institucional e o ambiente organizacional

Abstract

The study aimed to analyze the relationship between investments and the economic performance of agribusiness organizations through the interactions between the institutional environment and the organizational environment. Based on the New Institutional Economics (NIE), the general hypothesis was that countries with solid institutional environments attract investments, which positively influence the economic performance of agribusiness organizations. The theoretical and empirical models were tested on a sample of 2,563 listed agribusiness organizations based in 53 countries around the world, whose data for the period 2011 to 2019 were collected from Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI), FAOSTAT, and Thomson Reuters Refinitiv Eikon®. The data were analyzed using multiple linear regression with unbalanced panel data and random effects. In summary, the results found support the general hypothesis for at least three reasons. First, the evidence suggests that government expenditure (SDG 2 indicator), credit to agriculture, and foreign direct investment in a nation are sensitive to the quality of the institutional environment, i.e., more significant contributions tend to be made in nations with strong and better structured institutional matrix, which reduces the uncertainty of the environment and ensures safeguards for investors' property rights. It was also found that the agricultural gross added value and the volume of arable land and agricultural production are stimuli to investments. As a second reason, the results indicate that the best economic performance is likely to occur in large companies with lower debt and high asset turnover in organizations based in countries with better quality investments, that is, where the best interactions between investments and agricultural production occur. Finally, third, this relationship is moderated by the institutional environment, in which higher risks or uncertainties resulting from a nation's "institutional vacuum" favor higher returns on assets and returns on investment for organizations. Therefore, the results support that the NIS premise that institutions matter applies in the context of this study.