Ownership Concentration and Firm Performance in European Emerging Economies: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

This paper aims to perform a large-scale meta-analysis to examine the relationship between ownership concentration and firm performance in emerging economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. A meta-synthesis of 1517 estimates collected from 69 previous studies indicated the presence of a statistically significant and positive effect of ownership concentration on firm performance. The synthesized effect size, however, is only modest at best. A meta-regression analysis conducted to identify the factors underlying the small effect size revealed that differences in target industries, estimation periods, design of ownership variables, data sources, estimators, and choices of control variables could have had systematic and profound effects on the empirical results presented in previous studies. We have also noted that publication selection bias is strongly suspected in this research field, and that, due to the magnitude of this bias, existing studies cannot be expected to provide genuine evidence regarding the effect of ownership concentration on firm performance in European emerging economies. Further empirical studies are required to identify the true effect in this region.