Ownership structure and firm value: Evidence from Korea (post-crisis analysis)

This paper investigates the effects of ownership structure and corporate governance system on the firm performance. Using 4,830 non-financial Korean firms listed in the KSE or KOSDAQ market during and after the crisis 1997-2001, I find that higher ownership concentration increases firm profitability but greater differences between control rights and ownership rights lowers firm performance. When using only top 30-chaebol affiliated firms, results suggest that there exists the possibility of "tunneling" by owner-managers, their family members, and other affiliated firms in the same chaebol. Unlike the previous papers, no significant evidence is found that firms affiliated with top-30 chaebols performs poorly compared to non-chaebol firms. An interesting finding is that the positive effect of foreign equity ownership is shown only in the later years 2000 and 2001. A close comparison between firms listed in the KSE and firms in the KOSDAQ market provides evidence that a poor corporate governance system increases the incentive for expropriation and decreases firm performance. I use both OLS and 2SLS methods because of the endogeneity problem.