Do family firms rise and decline in three generations? Not only since Thomas Mann's “The Buddenbrooks” has the survival rate of family firms intrigued family business scholars, practitioners and consultants. In this article, we trace the family firm survival rate to its roots and discuss its...

In this paper, we present an analysis of the influence of inheritances on the distribution of wealth alongside selected recent findings on current trends in inheritances and gifts. The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) is used from a longitudinal perspective to study the extent to which the...