(ii) Proportion of directors who are family members. A family business is defined
as having a majority of family ownership; hence nonfamily share ownership range between 0 and 49 percent. Based on tbe work of Benston (1985) it is argued that bigher nonfamily ownership causes higher agency costs through greater incentive for the family to divert resources for their personal use {see Carey and Simnett [1998]}. With greater agency costs, the potential loss in the absence of auditing increases. The present study uses the proportion of family board of director representation to proxy variations in family ownership.
(iii) Debt to equity. As the proportion of debt in a firm's capital structure rises,
tbere is scope for greater agency conflict {i.e., between capital providers, or between
debt holders and firm management) {see Chow [1982]). Again, the resulting increase
in agency costs increases the potential loss in the absence of auditing. Hence
the higher the debt-to-equity ratio the higher the rate at which losses accrue in the
absence of an audit.