In family firms, the succession of controlling equity stake to next generation is an issue of paramount importance. This, however, can be a major challenge in the presence of heavy inheritance or gift tax burden (high tax rate and absence of tax-saving vehicles, such as trusts or foundations)...

This paper uses managerial control rights data for over 5000 firms from 31 countries to examine the net costs and benefits of cash holdings. We find that when external country-level shareholder protection is weak, firm values are lower when controlling managers hold more cash. Further, when...

The paper examines the payout policy of UK firms listed on the London Stock Exchange during the 1990s. We complement the existing payout literature studies by analyzing jointly the trends in dividends and share repurchases. Unlike in the US, we find that, in the UK, firms do not demonstrate a...

We investigate the investment-cash flow sensitivity of a large sample of the UK listed firms and confirm that investment is strongly cash flow-sensitive. Is this suboptimal investment policy the result of agency problems when managers with high discretion overinvest, or of asymmetric information...

This paper uses a unique dataset from Denmark to investigate the impact of family characteristics in corporate decision making and the consequences of these decisions on firm performance. We focus on the decision to appoint either a family or external chief executive officer (CEO). The paper...

This paper investigates minority expropriation problems in closely-held corporations, where control is shared by a small number of blockholders. Using a large sample of Spanish firms for the years 1996 through 2000, we find that firms whose characteristics make them more vulnerable to minority...

This paper empirically documents the performance and behavior of family firms listed on the French stock exchange between 1994 and 2000. On the French stock market, approximately one third of the firms are widely held, another third are founder-controlled and the remaining third are...

Japan's corporate sector has, at different times in recent history, been organized according to every major model. Prior to World War II, wealth Japanese families locked in their control over large corporations by organizing them into pyramidal groups, called zaibatsu, similar to structures...

Prior work in emerging markets provides evidence of an association between corporate governance and firm market value (based on the trading prices of minority shares), more limited evidence of a causal relationship, but very little evidence on the channels through which governance may affect...

We survey the empirical literature on disproportional ownership, i.e. the use of mechanisms that separate voting rights from cash flow rights in corporations. Our focus is mostly on explicit mechanisms that allow some shareholders to acquire control with less than proportional economic interest...