Corporate governance and firm performance in Arab equity markets: Does ownership concentration matter?

The paper works with a sample of 304 firms from different sectors of the economy, and from a representative group of Arab countries (Egypt, Jordan, Oman and Tunisia) where related data could be gathered. We first present crucial descriptive statistics on the firms' corporate ownership, identity, and their performance and market measures, and then use unstructured but credible equations to capture the relationship between these variables. Specifically, we study the determinants of ownership concentration; the effect of ownership concentration on firms' performance and market measures, after controlling for the endogeneity of ownership concentration through the use of country and firm characteristics as instrumental variables; and, the effects of ownership identity and blockholdings. The broad conclusion that emerges is that ownership concentration is an endogenous response to poor legal protection of investors, but seems to have no significant effect on firms' performance.. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.