Ownership Structure of Firms and Their Export Performance: Evidence from Korea

The central objective of our paper is to empirically examine the relationship between the ownership structure of firms and their export performance using data from Korea. Due to growing globalization, export performance has become a highly influential determinant of firm performance. While a large and growing empirical literature investigates the relationship between the ownership structure and overall performance of firms, there are almost no studies which delve into the issue of whether the concentration of ownership has a positive or negative effect on export performance. The primary contribution of our study is to help remedy this serious gap in the empirical literature on ownership and performance. Our empirical results indicate that firms with more concentrated ownership are more likely to be exporters and export more.