경쟁위협은 지배주주를 규율하는가?: 소유-지배괴리도에 근거한 사적효용추구 유인을 중심으로

This paper investigates whether competitive threats in product markets discipline the incentive of controlling shareholders to pursue the private benefit of control based on the ownership-control disparity. In more detail, this paper analyzes the effect of ownershipdisparity of controlling shareholders on firm value or corporate decision makings in consideration with the level of product market competition. Empirically, we confirm that ownership- disparity has significantly negative effect on firm value as argued in previous literatures. More importantly, this effect is observed only in less competitive product markets, but not in more competitive product markets. This result is robust to alternative measures for the level of product market competition and to control of the endogeneity problem. We can interpret this result as competitive threats effectively discipline the potential agency problems of controlling shareholders which come from the ownership-control disparity. Thus, product market competition can be considered as an important external control mechanism in Korean capital market. Additionally, the negative effect of ownershipcontrol disparity on the level of internal corporate governance and dividend amount is strongly observed in less competitive product markets than in more competitive product markets. Therefore, we can confirm that these corporate decision makings are the main path of firm value relevance.