가족 기업과 비가족 기업의 기업 불투명성 차이와 투자 및 경영 성과의 연관성에 관한 연구

In family firms, the interests of family management and controlling shareholders are aligned, thereby leading to less Type I agency problem between them (convergence of interests hypothesis). However, their conflicts of interests with non-family shareholders could result in higher level of Type II agency problem(entrenchment hypothesis). Under these circumstances, this study expects that the level of information asymmetry between the firm and the market could be higher in family firms and empirically examines the hypothesis using Corporate Opacity Index developed by Anderson et al.(2009). It also explores the differential impact of corporate opacity on the firms’ investment and performance and reports significant results consistent with the hypothesis. From the empirical results, this study confirms that the level of corporate opacity is higher in family firms, compared to non-family firms. The impact of corporate opacity on the investment and performance is negative, but the negative impact is weaker in family firms. As there is less Type I agency problem, the incentive to reduce information asymmetry between the family owner-mangers and the market may be lower in family firms. However, since the interests of owners and managers are aligned together in family firms, their investment and performance could be led to become more favorable to the firm. These imply that family firms have differential cause for their higher level of corporate opacity by reflecting their unique corporate governance structures, and their higher level of corporate opacity could be less concerned by the market, compared to the corporate opacity in non-family firms.