Does it matter who owns firms? Evidence on the impact of supermajority control on private firms in Europe
研究了欧洲私人企业中绝对控制权所有者类型（家族、机构、公司、国家）对企业投资决策的影响，发现家族企业投资率更高且对投资机会更敏感，但无形资产投资较少。
We explore how the type of owner affects private enterprise investment decisions in Europe. In contrast to the literature, we analyze firms with concentrated (>95%) ownership stakes to reduce the potential that agency problems contaminate our results. We consider four types of supermajority owners – family, institutional, corporate, and state and use detailed ownership and financial information from a large sample of private firms from 24 European countries from 2001 to 2018. We find that family-owned firms exhibit higher gross investment rates and substantially higher sensitivity to investment opportunities, profitability, cash flow, and value-added growth compared to corporate and institutional owners. At the same time, and more consistent with the literature, family-owned firms invest significantly less in intangible assets than other ownership types. To demonstrate the robustness of our results, we employ matching samples complemented by analysis of owner-type transitions from family owners to corporate and institutional owners.