Around the world, large corporations usually have controlling owners, who are usually very wealthy families. Outside the U.S. and the U.K., pyramidal control structures, cross shareholding and super voting rights are common. Using these devices, a family can control corporations without making a...

Does limited access to formal savings services impede business growth in poor countries? To shed light on this question, we randomized access to non-interest-bearing bank accounts among two types of self-employed individuals in rural Kenya: market vendors (who are mostly women) and men working...

Families run a large fraction of business groups around the world. In this paper, we analyze how the structure of the families behind these business groups affects the groups' organization, governance and performance. To address this question, we constructed a unique data set of family trees and...

Pascal Engel investigates how outside directors are incentivized in family firms that are publicly listed but still partly owned by members of the founding family. Owning families significantly influence their firms' corporate conduct with their own set of goals, sometimes in conflict with...

We observe less efficient capital allocation in countries whose banking systems are more thoroughly controlled by tycoons or families. The magnitude of this effect is similar to that of state control over banking. Unlike state control, tycoon or family control also correlates with slower...

Sandra Wolf develops a better understanding of the importance of clearly communicating family influence. She examines the efficacy of brand elements that signal family influence and that help external stakeholders to identify a family firm. An experiment with 543 students in Germany and...

Jörg Schäfer investigates the influence of family firm specific decision rationales based on socioemotional wealth on vertical and horizontal pay ranges in family firms. Building on a primary data set of over 200 family firms in Germany and applying multiple regression analysis techniques, as...

In an era marked by the rapid development of digital technologies, established firms face the necessity of digital transformation to remain competitive with digitally native entrants. Despite the acknowledged economic importance of digital transformation for family firms, the evidence is split....

The U.S. personal bankruptcy system functions as a bankruptcy system for small businesses as well as consumers, because debts of non-corporate firms are personal liabilities of the firms' owners. If the firm fails, the owner has an incentive to file for bankruptcy, since both business debts and...

In this paper we study the determinants of business groups' ownership structure using unique panel data on Korean chaebols. In particular, we attempt to understand how pyramids form over time. We find that chaebols grow vertically (that is, pyramidally) as the family uses well-established group...