Drawing upon the literature on organizational imprinting, we examine how a firm’s history impacts its performance in subsequent periods. In an emerging market context of India, we argue and find support that the degree of imprinting of the pre-liberalization era is negatively related to the persistence of superior performance in the post-liberalization period. Furthermore, we investigate the role of imprinting attenuators and we find support that firm’s listing status and its degree of internationalization weaken this base-line relationship. Empirical results based on a large unbalanced panel data set of 18,202 firm-year observations of Indian firms during the period of 1991-2005 provide robust support to our conceptual model. Complementing the growing literature examining the impact of contemporaneous institutional changes on performance, this study aims to bring attention to the important role of institutional history of the firms from the emerging economies."