Does family ownership impact positively on firm value? Empirical evidence from Western Europe

Given the importance of family firms all over the world, our main objective is to study whether ownership concentration in the hands of family owners contributes to increase the market value of the firm. Additionally, we analyze whether family firms outperform nonfamily corporations. The estimation of our models by using the Generalized Method of Moments provides interesting results. We find that family ownership positively impacts on firm value. Nevertheless, when ownership concentration in the hands of the family is too high, firm value decreases; thus giving rise to a non-linear relation between family ownership concentration and firm value. Moreover, our results show that young family firms perform better than old ones. Finally, we find that family firms are superior performers to non-family ones, even when nonlinearities are taken into account; but the better performance is primarily due to young family corporations. Overall, the empirical evidence provided supports a positive impact of family ownership on firm value, supporting the idea that family control may be beneficial to minority shareholders