We investigate the impact of family blockholders on the firm's debt agency costs under different investor protection environments. On one hand, families--through their undiversified investments, inter-generation presence, and reputation concerns--can mitigate debt agency costs. On the other hand, families--through their unique power position that can lead to private benefits extraction and higher bankruptcy risk--can exacerbate debt agency costs. The actual impact can go either way and what matters should be the creditors' protection environment. Using international bond issues from 1995 to 2000 for 1,072 international firms originating from 24 different countries, we find that family firms originating from low investor protection environments suffer from higher debt costs compared to non-family firms, while family firms originating from high investor protection environments benefit from lower debt costs compared to non-family firms. We find no impact from non-family blockholdings. These results are robust to various specifications and confirmed by an out-of-sample test using bonds issued by U.S. and foreign firms listed in the U.S. originating from 27 different countries.
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.
References listed on IDEAS 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.:
Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silane & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1996.
"Law and Finance,"
NBER Working Papers
5661, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1998.
"Law and Finance,"
Journal of Political Economy,
University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(6), pages 1113-1155, December.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997.
" A Survey of Corporate Governance,"
Journal of Finance,
American Finance Association, vol. 52(2), pages 737-83, June.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-De-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer, 1999.
"Corporate Ownership Around the World,"
Journal of Finance,
American Finance Association, vol. 54(2), pages 471-517, 04.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Mike Burkart & Fausto Panunzi & Andrei Shleifer, 2002.
"Family Firms,"
NBER Working Papers
8776, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Did you know? You can create a compilation of all publications of a group of people, say alumni of a program, your students or memers of an association.