Large shareholders and accounting research

• 作者: Ole-Kristian Hope
• 来源期刊: 中国会计学刊：英文版
• 学科: 经济
• 关键词: LARGE SHAREHOLDERS AGENCY COSTS Controlling OWNERS
• 年，卷（期）: 2013,（1）
• 页码范围: 3-20
• 页数: 18页
• 分类号: F276.6

摘要

Large shareholders are a potentially very important element of firms’ corporate governance system. Whereas analytical research is typically vague on who these large shareholders are, in practice there are important variations in the types of large owners(and the different types of large owners could play very different governance roles). After briefly reviewing the standard agency cost arguments, in this article I emphasize the heterogeneity of concentrated ownership and in particular focus on the roles of families, institutions, governments, and employee ownership. I also discuss the role of large shareholders in private(i.e., unlisted) firms, where ownership tends to be more concentrated than in publicly traded firms. Finally, I briefly discuss variations in ownership structures across selected countries.