This article explores the quality of accounting information in listed family firms. The authors exploit the features of the ltalian equity market characterized by high ownership concentration across all types of firms to disentangle the effects of family ownership from other major block holders on the quality of accounting information. The findings document that family firms convey financial information of higher quality compared to their nonfamily peers. Furthermore, the authors provide evidence that the determinants of accounting quality differ across family and nonfamily firms
Keywords
Family firms
Financial reporting
Earnings attributes
Accounting quality
Accounting information is essential for all companies competing to acquire resources on financial markets.
High-quality financial reporting is well appreciated by market participants as it reduces information asymmetry, increases overall transparency, and provides a better device for contracting purposes
(Watts&Zimmerman,1986)
In turn, financial reporting of higher quality is associated with positive capital market consequences such as lower cost of equity and debt capital
Higher market liquidity better firm performance, and higher competiveness
During the past decade numerous scandals have put under increased scrutiny the “quality of financial reporting” Widely held corporations as well as publicly listed family firms have been indicted for their bad accounting
This study empirically investigates whether family ownership affects the quality of financial reporting in listed firms
Exploring the quality of accounting information in family firms is a timely issue because of their prevalence among listed firms around the world
Nevertheless, in spite of the great attention on family firms we still know very little about the quality and the overall informativeness of their financial reporting practices
To our knowledge, a few studies have explored differences between family and nonfamily firms in terms of earnings quality and voluntary disclosure However, the extant literature fails to disentangle the influence of family ownership from other major block holders on the quality of accounting information because of an almost exclusive focus on concentrated than family ownership. In addition, we are not aware of studies that investigate the “determinants” of accounting quality across family and nonfamily firms.
This study builds on previous research in governance and accounting that sought to assess the relationship between ownership structures and the characteristics of accounting information (Bushman & Smith,2001). Our aim is to investigate if family firms provide accounting information of higher (lower) quality compared to their nonfamily peers and what type of determinants possibly drive any differences.
Previous studies mainly investigate the U.S. equity market where listed firms are generally widely held The common proxy utilized to identify family firms is high ownership concentration. In these studies nonfamily firms are typically those with widespread ownership structures and whose managers have incentives to opportunistically maximize their personal wealth (the so-called “agency problem I” ; hereafter AP I). Family firms are instead regarded as those with highly concentrated ownership whose main problem is relater to the risk of expropriation of unprotected minorities(the so-called “ agency problem II”; hereafter AP II). There agency conflicts potentially induce managers to hide private information from outside parties with negative consequences on the quality of financial reports (McConnell & Servaces,1990).
We exploit the features of the Italian equity market characterized by high ownership concentration across all types of companies (La Porta, Loper-de-Silanes, & Shleifer,1999) to disentangle the effects of family ownership from other major block holders on the quality of accounting information. We analyze a panel of 778 firm tear observation (507 family firm-tear observations and 271 nonfamily firm-year observations ) on firms listed on the Italian Stock Exchange from 1998 to 2004. Our results show that family firms exhibit on average higher accounting quality compared to nonfamily firms. More over,we show that the determinants of accounting quality across family and nonfamily firms systematically differ along several dimensions.
This study contributes to the family business literature in three ways: (a) it sheds some light on the relatively unexplored topic of accounting quality in family firms, (b) it differentiates the effects of family ownership vis-à-vis other major block holders on accounting quality, and(c) if provides evidence of the positive influence of family ownership on financial reporting quality.
The reminder of the article unfolds as follows : First,we discuss the institutional setting. Second, we present the theoretical foundations and out hypothesis. Third,we describe the research design and data. Fourth, we illustrate the findings and discuss their implications. Last, we conclude by highlighting the overall contribution and implications of out study as well as its limitations.
The Institutional Setting : Corporate Governance in Italian Listed Companies.
The Italian equity market represents an idea setting to investigate the influence of family ownership on accounting quality because of its unique features: (a) a large number of listed family firms and (b) a high ownership concentration across all listed firms (Bianco & Casavola, 1999).
For historical reasons, family firms represent a higher portion of companies traded on the Italian Stock Exchange Similar to other countries with poor financial infrastructures, the control of a large fraction of the economy is delegated to wealthy and well-established families (Pagano,Paneta, & Zingales, 1998). The Italian equity market is also characterized by a high level of ownership concentration across all listed firms. Three different classes of major block holders are commonly identified: families with active family members, the state or other public bodies, and conalitions of shareholders with venturesome activity or entrepreneurial backgrounds. Moreover, controlling families are usually very much involved in activities of the firm as revealed by the regular appointment of family members to the board of directors or even in CEO position (Precipe, Makarian, & Pozza,2008). The presence of a dominant shareholder in Italian listed firms makes the separation between owners and managers less severe, thus reducing AP 1. On the other hand, it raises a different conflict between controlling shareholders and minorities, known as AP II(Stulz,1988).
These distinctive features of the Italian setting represent a unique opportunity to investigate the quality of financial reporting information in family firms. Concurrent U.S.-based research in fact commonly identifies family firms by relying on high levels of ownership concentration as the main proxy (Anderson, Duru, & Rceb,2009) and provides results that often capture the influence of high ownership
Concentration –rather than “family ownership”—on accounting quality .
The Italian setting allows us to disentangle better the influence of familism on accounting quality through a more fine-grained distinction between family-owned
Companies and firms with other major block holders.
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Theoretical framework
Accounting information is crucial for all firms that compete to acquire resources both on equity or debt markets .
High-quality accounting information is well appreciated by market participants as it reduces asymmetric information , increases transparency, and provides better contracting devices .
The accounting literature emphasizes the desirability of high quality accounting information for all companies operating on financial markets
and documents positive capital market consequences such as reduces cost of capital and increased market liquidity, which makes stocks more attractive to outside investors.
High-quality financial statements provide users with more reliable and decision useful information and better reflect he underlying economic fundamentals of companies.
The quality of accounting information refers to (a) the in formativeness of
reported numbers (b) the level of disclosure, and (c) the degree of compliance with generally accepted accounting standards .
However, among the three listed above, the in formativeness of accounting numbers plays a prominent role
Earnings have two different components cash flow and accruals.
The first component is more objective and hardly manageable through accounting policies, whereas the latter is more discretionary.
The discretion managers are allowed with accruals should in theory be exercised to achieve positive outcomes.
However, preparers could use their discretion to manipulate earnings to alter financial reports and mislead stakeholders about underlying firms
Performance, thus achieving private benefits .
For this reason, in a large number of studies, the quality of earnings is usually assessed by looking at some specified properties of earnings commonly labeled “earnings attributes” (accrual quality, persistence, predictability, smoothness, value relevance, timeliness, and conservatism )
Ownership Concentration
And Accounting Quality
Although the quality of financial reporting in family firms is increasingly attracting researchers attention, we still lack consensus on how family control exercises its influence on accounting quality (Hutton,2007). The greater portion of studies on this topic are U.S.-based and mainly discriminate between family and nonfamily firms by looking at the degree of ownership concentration. Because family control represents the most diffuse form of concentrated ownership in the United States, The assumption is that high ownership concentration should be able to capture whether a firm is family run or not. However, such operatio