Title

An Institutional Analysis of the US Foreign Sales Corporation

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-1-2002

Description

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how institutional analysis can be applied to the study of an evolving institution-the Foreign Sales Corporation (FSC). The FSC was created by the US government to provide a tax incentive to domestic exporters. It has a checkered history because the European Union views it as an export subsidy. After establishing that the FSC is definitely an institution, Scott's institutional synthesis is utilized as a conceptual prism to demonstrate how his framework can be utilized to examine complex phenomena. The study also tests a crucial proposition for institutional theory and explores a research question critical to the continuing development of the theory. That question deals with the persistence of the FSC as an institution.

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