We find that potential conflicts between majority and minority shareholders strongly influence how dividends respond to taxes. When the controlling shareholder has a smaller stake, the incentives to extract private benefits are stronger – a shareholder conflict that can be mitigated by...

We examine how dividend policy is used to mitigate potential conflicts of interest between majority and minority shareholders in private Norwegian firms. The average payout is 50% higher if the majority shareholder's equity stake is 55% (high conflict potential) rather than 95% (low conflict...

We find that the difference between the mean return on assets of all Norwegian family firms and nonfamily firms is 1.4 percentage points and positive every year over twenty years. This family firm premium increases when the family as a whole owns a higher equity stake, has fewer owning members,...