A growing literature is devoted to understand how firms react to unforeseen events. Contributing to this research, we investigate how the presence of families in corporate ownership and governance affected firm performance during the Covid-19 pandemic. Using data from Italy, the first western...

We study how family ownership shapes the firms' likelihood of being involved in antitrust indictments. Using data from Italy, we show that family firms are significantly less likely than other firms to commit antitrust violations. To achieve identification, we exploit a law change that made it...

A vast literature in economics has focused on the role of culture in financial development and growth. Here, I review works which have adopted a cultural perspective to the study of family businesses. While family firms are ubiquitous, their prevalence displays wide spatial differences. Also,...

We show that families are an engine of venturing activities: one third of all corporate venture capital (CVC) deals in the US from 2000 to 2017 originated from family firms. Family firms have a distinct venturing style: they syndicate more often, join larger syndicates, and make closer deals...