No abstract

It is generally assumed that family firms emphasize socioemotional wealth, which exacerbates wealth expropriation from noncontrolling shareholders. We examine this issue in the context of nonfamily shareholders, specifically institutional investors, and find that institutional investors avoid investments in family firms. Furthermore, integrating institutional theory with a socioemotional wealth approach, we find that financial regulation can mitigate external investors’ concerns. These two results are important theoretically because they provide insight into the effect of agency problems specific to family firms and are important for management practice because they can provide guidance for family firms interested in new sources of capital.

No abstract

This study provides evidence regarding the effects of online trading on stock price and trading volume reactions to quarterly earnings announcements. We test for differences in stock price and volume reactions to quarterly earnings announcements between a period with a significant amount of online trading (1996‐99) and a period without online trading (1992‐95). We conjecture that online trading has increased the proportion of naive investors in the market. We predict that this will result in (1) a decrease in the average precision of investor information prior to earnings announcements leading to higher earnings response coefficients (ERCs), (2) an increase in differential interpretation of earnings leading to higher trading volume reactions that are unrelated to price change, and (3) a decrease in differential prior precision leading to a decrease in the association between trading volume and absolute price change. We find evidence consistent with all three predictions. Our findings are relevant for assessing the validity of concerns about online trading expressed by regulators and the validity of theoretical models of trade with asymmetrically informed investors.

No abstract