We examine the unique nature of agency problems within publicly traded family firms by investigating the earnings management decision of dominant family owners relative to nonfamily. To do so, we draw upon literature demonstrating that family owners are loss averse with respect to the family’s socioemotional wealth (SEW), or the affective endowment derived from firm ownership and control. Our t...

A growing body of research has centered on the issue of the relationship between financial and environmental performance. The lack of consensus in this literature can be attributed to several factors. The cost of complying with environmental regulation can be significant and detrimental to shareholder wealth maximization. Conversely, a firm that can effectively control pollution might also be a...

As is well known, the deterministic version of the maximum principle allows us to state rigorously the relationship between deterministic income (essentially the Hamiltonian) and deterministic wealth (essentially the state evaluation function). As a background motivating point of departure, consider the simple story of an infinitely long-lived individual whose sole wealth consists of a bank dep...