Bertrand, Marianne Johnson, Simon Samphantharak, Krislert Schoar, Antoinette
Abstract
How does the structure of the families behind business groups affect the group's organization, governance, and performance? We construct a unique dataset of family trees and business groups for 93 of the largest business families in Thailand. We find a strong positive association between family size and family involvement in the ownership and control of the family businesses. The founders' sons play a central role in both ownership and board membership, especially when the founder of the group is dead. Greater involvement by sons is also associated with lower firm-level performance, especially when the founder is dead. One hypothesis that emerges from our analysis is that part of the decay of family-run groups over time is due to the dilution of ownership and control across a set of equally powerful descendants of the founder, which creates a "race to the bottom" in tunneling resources out of the group firms.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Volume (Year): 88 (2008) Issue (Month): 3 (June) Pages: 466-498 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Heidi Boesdal).
Related research
Keywords:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)