Does Family Control Affect Trade Performance? Evidence for Italian Firms

Giorgio Barba Navaretti (), Riccardo Faini and Alessandra Tucci

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: This paper examines whether the export decision of firms is affected by their ownership structure, specifically it looks at whether family control is an obstacle to entering foreign markets. The underlying assumption is that family firms are risk averse. Risk aversion may be an obstacle to entering foreign markets, as far as these are perceived as more volatile and risky than the domestic one, particularly when such choice entices bearing relatively high sunk costs. We develop an illustrative theoretical model that shows how the combination between high risk aversion and low initial productivity may hinder family firms' decision to enter foreign markets, particularly distant ones. The empirical analysis, based on a detailed panel data set of Italian firms covering the years from 1995 to 2003, confirms such predictions by showing that family controlled firms do indeed export less than other type of companies even after controlling for firm heterogeneity in productivity, size, technology and access to credit.

Keywords: firm structure; foreign markets; family firms; exports (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F1 F14 L2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec and nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp0896.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Does Family Control Affect Trade Performance? Evidence for Italian Firms (2008)
Working Paper: Does Family Control Affect Trade Performance? Evidence for Italian Firms (2008)
Working Paper: Does family control affect trade performance?: evidence for Italian firms (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp0896

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().