This paper analyzes how the predominant example of a controlling shareholder, i.e., the firms' founders and their families, influence payout policy. Using a panel dataset of 660 listed firms in the 1995 to 2006 period from Germany, we find that family firms exhibit a higher propensity and level...

Around the world (with the U.S. and U.K. as exceptions) concentrated ownership structures and controlling shareholders are predominant even among listed firms. We provide novel empirical evidence how such controlling shareholders, in particular founding families, affect payout policy decisions....

This study examines how family firm characteristics affect capital structure decisions. In our analysis we disentangle the influence of three distinct components of a family firm: ownership, supervisory and management board activities by the founding family. Thereby, we use a unique panel...

This paper examines how direct involvement of employees in corporate governance affects executive compensation. German law mandates that half of the supervisory board seats belong to employee representatives in firms with over 2,000 domestic employees. For identification, we exploit this...

In this paper, I analyze the motives moving founders and their families to influence the capital structure decision. For this, I complement detailed corporate governance information for Germany with data from other countries. The results for the German bank-based financial system contradict...

Family firms are an important phenomenon of the German capital market. We analyse the broadest market segment of the German Stock Exchange, the CDAX, for the years 1998 to 2008. According to a founding-family definition almost half of all CDAX-listed non-financial firms in Germany can be...