Private Family Ownership and the Agency Costs of Debt
研究了私人家族企业债务的代理成本，通过同时考察银行贷款的显性价格（利率）和隐性价格（商业和个人抵押品），发现家族企业更可能抵押个人资产，表明其债务代理成本更高。
This article presents empirical evidence on the agency costs of debt in private family firms by examining the explicit (interest rate) as well as implicit (business and personal collateral) bank loan price simultaneously. Using a cross sectional sample of lines-of-credit of the NSSBF database, family firms appear to be more likely to pledge personal collateral which suggests that agency costs of debt are higher in family firms. Hence, personal collateral seems to be a better instrument than interest rates or business collateral for financial institutions to cope with the specific agency problems (e.g. self-control problems and negative effects of parental altruism) in family firms.