As most other countries, Germany also faces dramatic regional differences in terms of socioeconomic development. One important driver of such development is the existence of a healthy entrepreneurial activity and the creation of new companies. We argue that venture capital (VC) and especially...

In January 2010 the Deutsche Börse Group introduced two family firm stock indices. Both indices are calculatedas price and performance indices and extend the number of investment strategy indices of Deutsche BörseGroup. The DAXplus Family is an all-share index whereas the DAXplus Family 30...

Based on 1182 dyads of venture capitalists and German portfolio companies involved ina financing round between 2002 and 2007, we examine the importance of spatialproximity between investors and investees in a dense economy. We find that theprobability of a financing relationship decreases by 8%...

Around the world (with the U.S. and U.K. as exceptions) concentrated ownershipstructures and controlling shareholders are predominant even among listed firms. We providenovel empirical evidence how such controlling shareholders, in particular founding families,affect payout policy decisions....

The impact of private equity firms on employment in their portfolio companies is a controversial topic widely discussed in academia and in practice in recent years. A large body of research has resulted from this debate. The studies are focused on different aspects of employment and are based on...

We revisit evidence whether incentives or IFRS drive earnings quality changes, analyzing a large sample of German firms in the period from 1998 to 2008. Consistent with previous studies we find that voluntary and mandatory adopters differ distinctively in terms of essential firm characteristics...

Goal structures in family firms seems of particular interest to the field as the overall orientation and the objectives of family firms are determined in an area of potential conflict between the two subsystems of firm and family. We asked shareholders of German family firms to rate the...

This study examines how family firm characteristics affect capital structure decisions. In our analysis we disentangle the influence of three distinct components of a family firm: ownership, supervisory and management board activities by the founding family. Thereby, we use a unique panel...

This paper investigates the strategy of private equity investors to take public companiesprivate in blockholder-based economies. Drawing on a unique dataset, we providestrong evidence that private equity investors buy companies in order to mitigatepotential agency problems and hence to improve...

We analyse whether family firms differ from non-family firms in terms of business segment and geographical diversification or the application of currency hedging instruments. This analysis is based on a unique dataset of 339 publicly listed companies (1,561 firm years) in the German Prime...