Financial Reporting Quality, Family Owned Business, And Investment Efficiency

Abstract

Present study investigates the impact of two monitoring mechanisms; family ownership, and financial reporting quality with other explanatory variables on investment efficiency for the period of 2007 to 2014 for non-financial listed companies at the Karachi Stock Exchange. This study employs two dimensional Pooled Ordinary Least Square Regression, Two Stage Least Square Regression (2SLS), and Generalized Method of Moment (GMM), Feasible Generalized Least Square Regression (FGLS) method to test and examine the significance of hypothesis. The results indicate that higher financial reporting quality and family ownership is associated with higher investment efficiency. Furthermore, the moderation effect of family ownership on the relationship of financial reporting quality and investment efficiency indicate that impact of financial reporting quality on investment efficiency is higher for family owned business as compare to the impact of financial reporting quality on investment efficiency for non-family owned business. The results also show that higher financial reporting quality mitigates the problem of over and under investment as information gap reduces. The results reveal that family ownership increases investment efficiency and may also mitigate the over and under investment problem. The family firms and higher financial reporting quality reduce the tendency of over-investment and under-investment. Therefore, alignment effect outreaches the entrenchment effect as family shareholder and management shares the same vision and have same long-run investment horizon. The desire to shift business to their next generation is possible if family firms invest in efficient projects, therefore, family firms have more efficient investments as compared to non-family firms. Therefore, in emerging market like Pakistan alignment effect, reduced information asymmetry, efficient monitoring, and long term horizon, and the preservation of socioemotional wealth reduce the propensity of under investment in family firms as compared to ii i non-family firms. The results indicate that family firm in Pakistan use accrual based earning management in order to meet their earning targets. In addition, they have lesser propensity to engage in real based earning management as real based earning management is hard to detect for the regulating bodies. In longer run, real based earning management can damage the business, therefore, family firm has lesser engagement in real based earning management in order to maintain their socio-emotional wealth perspective. The family firms report lower abnormal discretionary expanses, abnormal cash flow from operations and lower abnormal production as compare to non-family firms.. The main findings of this study are almost the same by using different estimation techniques and proxies to measure investment efficiency, family ownership and financial reporting quality. The implication that emerges from these results is that financial reporting quality and family ownership act as a corporate governance mechanism tool that enhances the investment efficiency of family firms as compared to nonfamily firms and also mitigate the over and under-investment problem in any family owned business. Thus, the results support the argument presented by the alignment hypothesis of Agency Theory and dynasty succession dimension of Socio-emotional Wealth Theory. Therefore, understanding the quality of these financial reports in family owned business allows investors, regulatory authorities and policy makers to make informed decision. Keywords: Family Ownership, Investment efficiency, Financial Reporting Quality