The Influence of Family Ownership on the Quality of Accounting Information

This paper explores the quality of accounting information in listed family firms. We exploit the features of the Italian equity market characterized by high ownership concentration across all types of firms to disentangle the effects of family ownership from other major block-holders on the quality of accounting information. Our findings document that family firms convey financial information of higher quality compared to their non-family peers. Further, we provide evidence that the determinants of accounting quality differ across family and non-family firms