Concentración de la propiedad y desempeño contable: El caso latinoamericano.

This paper studies the effects of ownership concentration on the accounting returns for a panel of 532 publicly listed Latin-American firms between the years 1999 and 2003. The firms are from five countries: Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Peru and Venezuela. The results, for a model that assumes variables independence, indicate a positive effect of ownership concentration on performance, and an effect, weaker, but still positive of performance on the ownership concentration. Under an approach of simultaneous equations, the effect of ownership concentration on performance is negative, and the effect of performance on ownership concentration, vanishes. The relationship between ownership concentration and performance suggests an entrenchment effect of controlling shareholders that hinders the competitiveness of the sampled firms.