Family ownership and stockholder reactions to environmental performance disclosure: A test of secondary agency relationships
利用2009年《新闻周刊》首次发布的美国500强企业绿色排名，研究发现股东对环境绩效评级高的公司反应更积极，且在家族企业中这一效应更强。
Abstract Using the first ever Newsweek “Green Rankings” of the 500 largest U. S. firms in 2009 as a significant historical event, we test for the stockholder reaction to ratings of corporate environmental performance. Both the conventional null hypothesis significance testing and Bayesian approaches show that stockholders react significantly more positively to corporations with higher ratings of corporate environmental performance and that this effect is stronger in family owned firms. Our findings suggest that majority shareholders do not necessarily appropriate minority stockholders' rents when investing in environmental activities, as would be the case in the presence of “Type II” agency conflicts between majority family owners and minority stockholders. The family ownership effect is also found to be stronger in dirty (heavy polluting) industries as well as in more competitive and more opaque industry contexts.