Abstract

We studied the impact of family ownership on firm performance by using a set of data on Chilean firms. From a sample of 175 firms listed on the stock market, the group of 100 family-controlled firms performed significantly better than the group of 75 nonfamily companies over the 10-year period under study (1995-2004). Three distinct measures of performance-ROA, ROE, and a proxy of Tobin's Q-were employed to test the differences of means between the two groups of firms. These results were in line with our multiple regression model. All these findings support our conceptual framework and hypothesis, which states that public family firms perform better than public nonfamily firms. © 2007 Family Firm Institute, Inc.