Founding Family Firms, CEO Incentive Pay, and Dual Agency Problems
研究362家美国小上市公司发现，家族企业CEO激励薪酬更低，且高管持股会进一步降低激励薪酬；这种激励薪酬抵消了家族对企业价值的正面影响，考虑激励薪酬后家族与非家族企业绩效无差异。
This paper contributes to the literature on agency theory by examining relations between family involvement and CEO compensation. Using a panel of 362 small U.S. listed firms, we analyze how founding families influence firm performance through option portfolio price sensitivity. Consistent with the dual agency framework, we find that family firms have lower CEO incentive pay, which is further reduced by higher executive ownership. Interestingly, such incentive pay offsets the positive impact that families have on firm valuation. Collectively, our results show that, compared with nonfamily firms, lower incentive pay adopted by family firms due to lower agency costs mitigates the direct effect of family involvement on firm performance. Once accounting for CEO incentive pay, we do not observe performance differences between family and nonfamily firms.