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The purpose of this paper is to examine how information asymmetry driven by earnings quality affects corporate cash holdings. It also investigates the role that financial constraints play in this effect.

The paper examines a large sample of 6,501 observations of 741 firms listed on Euronext Paris over the period 2000–2015. Earnings quality is computed using the Jones model performance-matched discretionary accruals developed by Kothari et al. (2005): the larger the absolute value of discretionary accruals, the lower the accruals quality.

The study finds that firms with poor accruals quality hold more cash and that cash holdings in firms of low reporting quality are higher under financial constraints. These results indicate that firms tend to increase their cash reserves in the presence of high information asymmetry which is notably driven by low accounting quality. The findings also suggest that information asymmetry associated with low reporting quality is greater when firms also have strong financial constraints. The study’s conclusions are consistent with the precautionary motive for cash holdings.

The results would enhance practitioners’ awareness of the importance of accounting choices in the management of cash policies. It would also give researchers an incentive to further explore how these policies are influenced by the precautionary behavior of managers.

This paper is the first work to investigate the effect of accruals quality on corporate cash holdings in the French equity market, which typically has a poor information environment resulting in high information asymmetry. Moreover, the role of financial constraints in this effect has not yet been explored.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of the control-ownership wedge of controlling shareholders (excess control) on the survival of French initial public offerings (IPOs).

This paper studies a large sample of 434 French IPOs. The empirical analysis uses the Cox proportional hazard and accelerated-failure-time models. Data are manually gathered from IPO prospectuses.

The findings support a positive relation between the control-ownership wedge and IPO survival time, indicating that survival is more likely in firms with high excess control levels. This result is consistent with the view that controlling shareholders with a large control-ownership wedge have incentives to preserve their private benefits of control by increasing firm survival chances. The findings also show that older IPOs are more likely to survive, while riskier and underpriced IPOs are more likely to delist.

The results provide a better understanding of the role of excess control in IPO survival. They also enrich the debate on the efficiency of the one-share-one-vote rule.

The research provides new insights into the role of agency conflicts in IPO survivability. In particular, it explores the effect of dominant shareholders with a control-ownership wedge on survival time.

This paper aims to review the empirical literature dealing with the association between family firms and tax avoidance.

Empirical papers are collected based on electronic searches in several editorial sources (e.g. Elsevier, Emerald, Meridian Allenpress, Springer, Sage, Taylor and Francis and Wiley-Blackwell) in family-related, accounting and finance journals. Key words used to identify relevant studies are “family firms” or “family ownership” combined with “tax avoidance”, “tax aggressiveness”, “tax evasion” and “tax heaven”. This search yields 21 published papers over the period of 2010–2022.

The summary of empirical studies examining the relationship between family firms and tax avoidance suggests that the majority of them have been conducted in Germany, USA and Taiwan and other European civil law countries. The association between family firms and tax avoidance is negative in USA, Finland and Belgium. By contrast, the relationship between family firms and tax avoidance is positive and significant in other developed (Germany and Italy) and developing economies (Brazil, India, Malaysia and Tunisia). In Taiwan, the impact of family firms on tax avoidance depends on corporate opacity that mitigates the negative impact of family firms on tax avoidance.

With respect to regulators, this review informs fiscal authorities that family firms are associated with high levels of tax aggressiveness in some settings (e.g. Brazil, Germany, Italy and Tunisia). Accordingly, they should be aware about this tax management behavior in family firms to avoid its adverse effect on tax revenues. With respect to auditors, this study alerts them about the necessity to consider fiscal audit risk linked to family firms when planning their audit missions especially in countries characterized by high level of corporate opacity.

This literature review represents a first historical record and an introduction for accounting scholars who aim to investigate the topics linked to tax aggressiveness in the family firms’ context. It also highlights some limits related to this stream of research and offers future research perspectives.