时间：2017年4月18日（周二）下午13：30

　　地点：史带楼601室

　　主持人: 朱振梅 博士

　　演讲嘉宾：Edward Lee (The University of Manchester)

　　Title：Does bequest motive affect family firm value and governance? A natural experiment

　　Co-authors: Haijie Huang, Edward Lee, Changjiang Lyu, and Yiyi Zhao

　　Abstract：China’s one-child policy is widely perceived to obstruct inter-generational successions among family businesses, and its recent reform enhances the future prospect of prolonging family ownership and/or management. We apply this reform as a natural experiment setting to examine whether and how an exogenous increase of bequest motive could influence family firm value and governance. On the one hand, such change may incentivize long-term focus, which discourages managerial myopia and promotes stewardship. On the other hand, it could also delay outsider succession, which impedes innovation and competitiveness. We provide robust evidence that family firms are associated with (i) more favorable share price responses to news of the reform and (ii) greater decline of insider tunneling behavior after the reform than non-family firms. These findings are also more pronounced among family firms with greater information asymmetry prior to the reform. Overall, our study suggests that the reform generates positive externality in the context of family firm governance.