Family ownership and financial performance relations in emerging markets

We use meta-analysis techniques to review the literature on the relation between family ownership concentration and performance for listed corporations in emerging markets. We find underlying positive relations between family ownership and performance that vary over time and across countries. Our tests highlight the importance of institutions in explaining differences across countries. We also find that a significant amount of the differences in relations across studies is influenced by researchers’ choices of regression methods for accounting for endogeneity. Generally, our results are consistent with the view that family ownership concentration can enhance monitoring of managers or better align majority and minority shareholder interests to improve corporate performance in emerging markets.