Download or read book The Economic Forces Governing Family Firms written by and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Family firms are the predominant organizational structure around the world today. However, little is known about their corporate policy decisions. This dissertation analyzes whether, how and why families influence the capital structure, payout policy and diversification decisions of their firms. Using a dataset of 660 listed German firms over the 1995 to 2006 period, significant differences between family firms and their non-family counterparts are identified. Family firms have lower leverage ratios, less diversification in unrelated business fields and a higher propensity for dividend payouts to shareholders. Families influence the corporate policy mainly by their active participation in the firm's top-management. Concerning the question why family firms adapt their corporate policy, the desire of the family to retain control over the firm is identified as the main economic "force" behind corporate policy decisions in family firms. These results have several important implications, e.g. for capital market regulators.