In this article the authors study the impact of a family business transfer on the financial structure and performance based on a sample of 152 small-to medium-sized businesses. The aim is to identify the effects of a succession by relying on panel data gathered over the period 1991 to 2006 resulting in more than 2,000 firm-year observations. The main findings are that a transfer from the first to the second generation negatively influences the debt rate of the company, whereas in successions between later generations this effect is reversed. With respect to firm growth, analyses indicate that in first-generation companies the growth rate decreases after the transition, whereas in nextgeneration firms no effect on the growth level can be identified. Finally, no evidence is found that a family firm's profitability is affected by succession, which shows that a transfer should not necessarily be seen as a negative event in the life cycle of a family business.

Motivated by the growing attention to the financing decisions of family firms, this review brings together the two highly relevant research fields of family business and finance. This study critically reviews 131 articles on financing decisions in family businesses, published between 1977 and 2016 in 64 finance and management journals. We develop a state of the art on family business financing literature and present a model to guide extant and future research by identifying gaps across the theoretical perspectives and across context-specific elements such as family business heterogeneity and country-specific factors.

Based on a sample of 425 SMEs, we investigate whether intergenerational differences affect the capital structure and growth behavior of family firms. We integrate the financing and growth relation into our research by using a 2SLS approach and the internal and sustainable growth concepts. Evidence is found that the capital structure is not directly influenced by the managing generation, but indirectly through the realized growth rate. Moreover, results indicate that next-generation companies grow slower because they have the tendency to forego part of their growth rather than risk the loss of family control due to the increased use of debt.

This study investigates the effect of both family-centered goals and family board representation (family member representation on the board of directors) on family firm capital structure. Based on a sample of 327 Belgian family SMEs, our findings show that family-centered goals indirectly affect the total debt rate through family board representation. More specifically, the results indicate that this mediating effect holds primarily for the short-term (vs. long-term) debt rate and for the financial (vs. nonfinancial) debt rate. Taken together, our findings suggest that the socioemotional wealth (SEW) perspective is relevant and fruitful to explain debt decisions in family firms. Our findings contribute to family business literature and enable scholars and practitioners to gain a better understanding of family firm capital structure decisions.