The Journal of Finance 发表心得

作者|David Reeb

来源| Impactful Research

Q1：这篇文章的想法非常有趣binance官网，您是如何想到这个研究问题并呈现为一个让大家都普遍感兴趣的问题的？

Q1: The research question itself is super interesting. How did you identify this question and frame it into a general question that others are also interested in?

阮天悦：这个问题至少对我而言非常有趣binance官网。当我们在写论文的时候，我们需要说服同行的其他人这是一个足够重要和普遍的问题。您是如何想到这个研究问题并呈现为一个让大家都普遍感兴趣的问题的？

Tianyue Ruan: The question itself is super interesting, at least for me. When we are writing papers, we need to convince other people in the profession that this is an important and general enough question. How did you identify this question and frame it into a general question that others are also interested in?

David Reeb：对于这篇论文来说，这是个有趣的问题，因为它的开始和大多数论文是不一样的binance官网。我读博那时候，每个人都读过Fama和Jensen在 Journal of Law and Economics 上发表的一篇极具影响力的文章。这篇文章是关于所有权和控制权分离的。它认为最有效的组织结构是一个企业里有人提供资本，有人是管理者，由此就形成了一个无约束最优化问题。而当你限制企业去拥有这两样东西时，事情就会变得糟糕。这种情况是次优的，因为劳动力和资本都不是最优，更重要的是，它们可能有不同的动机。这是一篇影响深远的文章，它影响了人们关于家族企业的看法。学术界，甚至是大众媒体对此的普遍印象是，家族企业是不存在的，即使存在也会经营不良。媒体经常报道不争气的家族继承人的丑事。

展开全文

David Reeb: That's an interesting question for this paper, because it didn't start like most papers are started. As background, back to when I got my PhD in finance, everyone read an incredibly influential paper by Fama and Jensen in the Journal of Law and Economics. This paper was about the separation of ownership and control, and it talked about that the most efficient organizational structure was one where you had people who had capital, and people who are managers, and that way you had an unconstrained optimization problem. When you only restricted firms to having both of those, this was bad. It was suboptimal in the sense that it was a bad set of labor, a bad set of capital, or the least not the best of it, and on top of that, they could have different motives. This was an incredibly influential article, and it really influenced what people thought about the family firm even existed in the US, and sort of the general impression among both academics, even the popular press was that, either they didn't exist, or they did exist, they were inherently bad. Press was always running stories about bad family heirs.

实际上，这篇文章的想法来自一些关于欧洲家族企业继承人的报道，说在欧洲有一些继承者很败家，他们没有能力接手家族企业（从而家道中落）binance官网。那些报道还说幸好美国没有家族企业（不然估计也会沦落于此）。然而我在看新闻的时候一下子就能想到三四个美国的家族企业，比如沃尔玛，就是一个非常成功的大型家族企业。所以家族企业当然存在，不可思议的是，他们认为这不存在。

In fact, for me, this paper got started with the story about some European heirs. They had the story about that there can be a firm in Europe, the heir goes terrible, he can’t take over the firm, and luckily, these firms don't exist in the US. Well, as I’m sitting there, watching this news program, I can think of three or four literally off the top of my head. A family firm, large firm like Walmart, who are highly successful and extremely large. This is really odd that they're saying they don't exist, of course, they exist.

我当时还在美利坚大学任职，那里的商学院旁边正好有个酒吧，不知道现在还在不在binance官网。看到那条报道后的某一天，我和Ronald Anderson正好去那个酒吧小酌几杯。我说我前段时间看到一条报道，说美国没有家族企业，我觉得那就是胡说八道。他盯着我，然后说：“过去的几个月我一直在收集美国标普500指数公司的所有权数据，追溯这些家族企业创办和退出的时间。”我很意外，但这篇文章就是这样开始的。我不知道是什么激发了他的灵感，显然他在我之前就有这个想法了。这就是我们那天的讨论，我们的讨论转向了我当时很喜欢的演化经济学。我觉得如果家族企业存在，它们不可能一无是处。因为如果经营不好，它们就会被淘汰。我就不会有摩托罗拉和诺基亚手机，因为苹果、三星这些能生产更好的手机的公司会淘汰掉它们。因此，哪怕我们认为它们前景不佳，它们也肯定有一些方法抵消掉不利因素，来让它们和非家族企业一样好。

I was working at American University at that time, and I don't know if it's still true, but on campus they had a bar, and it was right next to the Business School. And then, a couple weeks later, Ronald Anderson and I walked over to the bar one day, we're going to have a drink. We're sitting there and I said: “I’m watching this news program the other day, and they said, family firms don't exist in the US, I just thought that was just total crap.” He just stared at me, and I like, okay what's up? And he said: “I’ve been collecting data for the last several months on ownership in the US, on S&P 500 firms. I’ve been tracing on when the family started the firm and when they exited.” I'm like, really? That started the process. I don't know what sparked him for it, he obviously sparked on it before I was sparked by it, but that was sort of the discussion we had that day, and our discussion turned to evolutionary economics that I was very much into. To me, if they existed, they could not be all bad. There must be some advantages, because if they were all bad, they would be competed out. I no longer have a Motorola phone, why? Because Apple and Samsung and all these different companies out competed them and produced better phones, and I no longer have a Nokia phone neither. As a result, if I thought they were all bad firms, they must have some counteracting things, so they probably should be about as good as non-family firms.

我记得当时Ronald已经快收集完数据了，所以我们开始构思这篇文章binance官网。我们最初的想法是，这将如何影响外部股权持有人？这将如何影响外部债权持有人？其中一个重要的论点是，这些家族在企业中拥有单一的投资组合，他们会推动企业多元化。所以我们的问题是家族企业是否会比非家族企业更多元化，这是我们这篇论文的出发点。实际上我们一开始就准备了三篇文章，你提到了JF的那篇。因为对我们来说，我们需要看股权所有者发生了什么，看债权所有者发生了什么，要明白是否存在多元化的问题。总之，这就是这篇文章的开始，大部分内容都是我们坐在酒吧里讨论出来的。

And he was getting very near the end of collecting the data as my recollection, so we started talking about how we should frame a paper on this. Our initial thoughts were how should this affect outside equity holders? how should this affect outside debtholders? One of the big arguments was that, because these families had undiversified portfolios in the firm, they would push the firm to diversify. A natural question for us to ask was, would family firms diversify more or less than the non-family firms, and that was sort of our starting point in working in this space. You mentioned the JF one, but we didn't just start with one paper, we actually started with three. Because we need to see what happens to equity owners, we need to see what happens to debt holders, and we need to understand that there's a diversification story going on here or not. That was sort of the beginning of the paper, and all that was hashed out for the most part, sitting there at the bar.

Q2：您发现家族企业比非家族企业有更好的绩效，即使是如今那些创始人去世后转由后代管理的老家族企业，这个结论很令人意外binance官网。有趣的是，不同的文化都有这么一个“富不过三代”的“三代诅咒”。这是您在开始研究的时候考虑的点吗？

Q2: Your finding that family firms have better firm performance than non-family firms, even for older family firms where the original founders have passed away and are now under the control of founders’ descendants, is quite surprising at first glance. Anecdotally, there is a “3 generations curse” in different cultures that basically state family firms do not last well. Is this what you had in mind when you started to research?

阮：您知道，关于家族中这种代代相传的传承，在中国我们有一句非常著名的谚语，叫“富不过三代”，显然其它文化也有类似“三代诅咒”的表述binance官网。在您开始做这个研究之前，您是否考虑过这一点，或者您相信家族企业完全可以战胜“三代诅咒”？

Ruan: Okay. You know, about these inheritance across generations who are in a family in China, we have this very well-known saying called “Wealth does not last beyond three generations”, and apparently other cultures have too. I know that you could think of a well-known family firm like Walmart when you started doing this, but in these three-generation curses, do you have in mind before you started looking into the research or you completely believed that family firms can beat these three-generation curses?

Reeb: 我们一开始做这个项目的时候并没有想到“三代诅咒”binance官网。但我的第一反应是，大多数企业，不管是什么股权结构，不管是谁负责管理，都很难坚持超过75年，实际上也就是三代人左右。它们可能被收购、被出售、倒闭、产品失败、破产，总之很少企业能坚持75年。这就是当我听到关于欧洲的、拉丁美洲的、亚洲的“三代诅咒”后的第一反应。但这不是我们一开始做研究的动机，我们是在写完文章之后才听到这个说法的。

Reeb: When we first started the project, we weren't thinking of this three-generation curse. And my immediate reaction is, most firms, regardless of the ownership structure, don't last three generations. It just doesn't matter who runs the firm, most firms don't last 75 years, that's effectively three generations, right? Because the most firms, they get bought, they get sold, they die, their products die, they explode, something happens. Very few firms, make it live 75 years. That was my immediate reaction when I heard that in Europe, I heard that in Latin America and I heard that in Aisa, three-generation thing. For us, it was never a motivation, we only heard it after we started presenting a well-developed paper.

Q3：毫无疑问，这篇论文自发表以来就非常有影响力binance官网。从您的角度来看，这篇文章具有如此重大影响力的主要原因是什么？

Q3: Without doubt, this paper becomes very influential since its publication. From your perspective, what are the main reasons that make this paper high-impact research?

阮：关于家族企业的研究，您不仅做了企业绩效的，还有如债券所有者、股权所有者、外部债权和股权所有者等方面的研究binance官网。但是这篇 Journal of Finance 的文章是这些方向里最有影响力的一篇，在您看来，这篇文章具有如此重大影响力的主要原因是什么？

Ruan: You studied different aspects of family firms, not just firm performance, which is the focus of your JF paper, but also other outcome variables, like debtholders, equity holders, external debt and equity holders. The reason we brought up the JF paper is because it is the most influential piece among these different directions of exploration. In your opinion, what are the main reasons that make this paper high-impact research?

Reeb: 我想是因为题目起得好吧binance官网。我们有一篇关于股权的文章，就是这篇发在JF上做企业绩效的文章，有一篇关于债务的文章，发在了 Journal of Financial Economics 上，还有一篇关于多元化的文章，发在了 Journal of Law and Economics 上。我们同时写了这三篇文章，其实我们以为JFE的那篇文章会有更大的影响。

Reeb: I think it has to do with the title. In our mind, there was an equity paper, which is the JF paper which we did firm performance, then there was a debt paper, which was the JFE paper, and then there was a diversification paper, which was the JLE paper. We're writing all three of them simultaneously. We truly thought the JFE paper would be the bigger impact one.

我们真的不太担心样本选择和处理分配问题，因为每个人都相信家族企业很难做好binance官网。对我们来说，最有说服力的证据就是债权部分。因为股权是长期的，不怎么变化；债权是短期的，债权结构会改变，或者债权会改变。对大部分企业来说，每隔几年就会有新的债务发行。所以在债务发行中有持续的周转，在大多数情况下，这是一个静态的东西。债务持续地不断发行，所以我们觉得这会是一篇更有影响力的文章。但是当我们用企业绩效来命名那篇关于股权的文章时，我认为它触及了一个更广泛的核心，涉及金融、战略、会计和经济等领域。

And the reason was we really weren't so much worried about selection versus treatment, because everyone believed they were so bad, they're just going to be horrible, they're going to be really bad. And to us, the most convincing evidence on that would be the debt piece. The debt piece is very short run, right? the equity is very long-lived, it doesn't change very much. But the debt structure changes, or the debt changes, the ownership of the debt, new debt is issued every few years for most firms. So there's constant turnover in the issuance of the debt, for the most part this is a static thing. The debt is constantly being rereleased, so to us, the debt was what we thought was going to be the more influential article when we were thinking about it. But when we were titling the equity piece into firm performance, I think it struck up a wider core, not just outside of finance, but with strategy, with accounting and economics and so forth.

阮：所以我们应该多花时间想个好题目binance官网。

Ruan: I see. We need to think about titling our work.

Q4：家族所有制与企业绩效的关系是一个实证问题binance官网，您在论文的实证过程、写作和修改中遇到过什么挑战吗？

Q4: The question of family ownership and firm performance is an empirical matter. Did you experience any challenges in the empirical execution, writing and revision of the paper?

阮：这个问题最终是个实证问题binance官网，您在这个过程有遇到什么挑战吗？写作和修改的过程呢？

Ruan: This question is ultimately an empirical matter, are there any challenges you encountered during the empirical execution, writing and revision of the paper?

Reeb：关于数据，Ron用了几个月的时间从微缩胶片中手工收集了所有数据，这是一项艰巨的任务binance官网。除了数据，实际上这是一篇相关性的文章，关键是展示这些相关性的结果，这就是为什么我们觉得关于债务的那篇文章会更能说服人。我们首先在美利坚大学内部展示了论文，然后我们就投稿了。所以其实我们没有机会听到太多的反对声音，人们只是说你们肯定哪里做错了，家族企业不可能和非家族企业一样好，更别提比非家族企业好了。我们没再和其他人谈论这篇论文，我们只是介绍了想法。但是人们就是说你一定做错了什么，特别是系里的一些资深学者，他们说这不可能，你需要检查这些结果，因为你搞错了。

Reeb: About data, Ron collected all this data, he manually collected this from microfiche over a several months period. It was a massive undertaking in his part. Other than data, this is in fact a correlation paper, the key factor was showing these correlation results, which is why we about the debt part was a bit more convincing. we presented the paper internally firstly in American University, then we submitted it right after that. Therefore, we did not get much pushback other than people simply said you must have done something wrong. There’re no way family firms are as good, let alone better than non-family firms. We didn't talk to anybody about the paper, we just presented in thought. And people, especially the senior people in the department, just said that you just done something wrong, there's just absolutely no way, you need to check these results, some more, because you screwed it up.

We submitted the paper to AER, and at AER we got the review back, relatively quickly, in six weeks. And the referees both said that they just don't believe our results, it just cannot be, and we screwed something up, so they're going to give us, about 10 comments: you should do this, this, and this. None of the comments were about identification, really. It was just much more about you must have screwed something up in these correlations. I mean, they didn't say it quite that way, but that's what they said. We took all their comments, revised the paper submitted it directly to the JF. I don't recall putting up the paper on SSRN. We heard back from JF a few weeks later with a referee report said that this is a much-improved paper. And we're like, okay, how is it much-improved? Literally we have shown it to no one except at American University and AER, and this is a much-improved paper. The main referee at JF said that he/she’s got a few more comments to make, and we did those comments and seven weeks later, we re-submitted it to JF. They gave us a conditional acceptance. Oh, it was the oddest.

阮：有没有可能是同一个审稿人binance官网？

Ruan: Is it possible the same referee?

Reeb：我一直怀疑是同一个审稿人binance官网。因为这个审稿人之前必须看过论文，才会说这篇论文提升了，所以要么是同一个审稿人，要么就是他们的合著者。

Reeb: I’ve always suspected it was the same referee. Somehow, this referee had to get access to the paper, and see that it had been improved, so it was either the referee or their co-author.

阮：所以您在两次提交之间都做了哪些改动呢binance官网？

Ruan: What did you change between the two submissions?

Reeb：当时审稿人给了八还是十条建议，我不记得了，因为就像说你需要做这个做那个，实际上我们把审稿人的要求都照做并整合进了文章里binance官网。所以当审稿人读这篇文章的时候就会觉得之前提到的问题都解决了。我记得我们甚至在投稿信中提及如果需要，我们很乐意提供数据。我们理解这种寥寥无名的苦恼，特别是对顶尖学校外的学生。Ron和我都不出自顶尖学校，我在南卡罗来纳大学，Ron在德克萨斯农工大学，他们不知道我们是谁。我们说我们会提供数据，但实际上他们也没要求。他们确实相信家族企业的存在，只是不相信它们可以做得更好。这是所有阻力的来源。

Reeb: The (AER) referees had about 8 to 10 comments. I don't remember exactly what the comments were, we literally just did everything the referees suggested and then incorporated that into the paper. So when the referee read the paper it was like, all the things that have been brought up before, have been done. And I think of recall, we even said in the cover letter we're happy to supply the data, if someone wants to evaluate, because there was a lot of distress, especially for people from not top schools. Ron and I hadn't come from top schools, with none of people knew us, we were complete no names. I went to South Carolina, and he went to Texas A&M. They just didn't have a clue who we were, so we said we'd give them the data, they didn't ask for it actually. But they did believe that family firms existed, they just didn't believe they could be better, that is where all the pushbacks came from.

阮：所以指明潜在的好处可能也是个说服他们的关键对吗？因为您可以通过实证证明这些之前理论上讨论过的好处是说得通的binance官网。您觉得人们开始接受您论点的其它原因是什么呢？

Ruan: So pointing out of the potential benefit, it’s probably another key to convince them because you can also show that empirically these benefits that had been discussed theoretically, do make sense right? What is another reason that people start buying your main thesis?

Reeb：我不觉得人们买账了binance官网。甚至在论文发表之后，还会有一些人联系我们，说我们的结果是完全错误的，这不可能，我们一定搞错了什么。Businessweek 打电话给我们说他们要做一个关于这篇文章的报道，说丑话说在前头，他们不相信我们，问我们确定没有捏造结果吗。我们说我们确定没有。然后他们说他们会花钱雇人重新收集数据、分析我们的问题。几个月后他们回来了，他们说我们的结果太小了，家族企业对企业绩效的好处应该更大一点。然后他们写了一篇长文，因为 Businessweek 在当时是本大杂志，每个人都会读，而我们上了他们的头条，然后其它的一些新闻媒体也报道了这件事。所以我认为这篇文章之所以有这么大的影响，和这件事有很大关系。人们在此之前只是觉得我们在说谎。

Reeb: I don’t think so. Even after the paper was published, several people contacted us and told us our results are crap, there's no way, we screwed something up. Businessweek called us and said they're going to do a story on this, and they're going to tell us up front, they don't believe us, and whether we sure we didn't make these results up? And we're like we're sure we didn't make them up. And Businessweek told us they're going to hire somebody to redo all of our analysis, so they’re going to pay somebody to collect data and redo all of the analysis and we said sure, if they have any problems calls. And then they came back a few months later, and they said, your results are too small, it should be much bigger for performance benefits the family firms. And then they wrote an article, big article about it, so there was a big Businessweek thing about it. Businessweek was a big magazine back in that day that everyone read sort of thing. It was on their headline, actually, on the front page. And they had a big series of articles on it, and then a couple of other news medias picked it up as well, so I think that it had a lot to do with its impact, people literally just thought we lied.

Q5：对于有兴趣研究家族企业和公司金融的年轻学者binance官网，您有什么建议吗？如果一个年轻学者想要开始认真地在这一领域做研究，有没有一个任务清单？

Q5: Do you have any advice for junior scholars who are interested in researching family firms and corporate finance more generally? What should be the "to-do" list if a junior scholar would like to seriously start doing research in this area?

阮：我想我还有最后一个问题binance官网。对于有兴趣研究家族企业和公司金融的年轻学者，您有什么建议吗？更一般来说，如果一个年轻学者想要开始认真地在这些领域做研究，您有没有一个任务清单给他们？

Ruan: I guess I have one last question from my prepare list, which is, do you have any suggestions or advice for junior scholars if they are interested in doing work in family firms and corporate finance, more generally, is there a to-do list or things that you think junior scholars should undertake if they are thinking about working on these spaces seriously?

Reeb: The biggest challenge now in family firms, and we didn't really face this issue in the earliest paper, because people's priors were knowledge that they didn’t exist or they did exist, they must have lower correlation results on equity, on debt, they must be more diversified. Because our correlation results went the other way and strongly went the other way, that made them important correlation results. The biggest challenge in doing research on family firms now is trying to show some sort of treatment effect. You know the first question is always, the family just stay, because it's a better firm, they stay because it's a worse firm, they stay because it's more difficult to sell the assets. This gives bundle up in the whole issue of dual-class share as well. So the biggest challenge is coming up with, well identify the results. And I think this is a bigger challenge than in most other areas of corporate finance. In any way to cleverly come up with some ways to get identified results, and almost in any of the questions, in this space, it is a major contribution.

阮：一些科技公司也是由有远见的创始人创建的，在成长起来后，他们也希望企业保持一定规模，并长期生存下去binance官网。您认为和您20年前研究的家族企业相比，这算是一种新的现象吗？

Ruan: Some tech companies are created by visionary founders, and once they become mature, they also want to stay in shape, and survive in the longer term. Do you think that compare to the family firms that you study about 20 years ago, is it kind of a new phenomenon to be studied?

Reeb：我不觉得这里有很多新的东西binance官网。大约90%的双重股份结构（企业）都是家族企业，所以不研究家族企业的话很难研究双重股份结构。因为如果你想研究双重股份结构的企业，你的对照组，需要是非双重股份结构的家族企业，否则你就把双重股份结构和家族控制混为一谈了。

Reeb: I don’t think there's much new here at all. Roughly 90% of dual-class share are family firms, so it's very difficult to study dual-class share without studying family firms. Because if you want to study dual-class share firms, your countered group, your non-treatment group needs to be other family firms who don't have a dual-class share. Otherwise, you're conflating both dual-class share and family control.

这是一方面，另一方面是，这些创始人创立了这些公司，他们会选择是否留下来binance官网。不管如何，不管你是索尼的创始人，还是特斯拉、苹果的创始人，他们大多想留下来。这些企业的创始人对企业有很大的影响，但如果他们想留下来的话，还是会面临一个多元化挑战。他们想持有多元化的投资组合，想在通过出售企业股份来获得充足资本的同时不失去对企业的控制，因为大多数人觉得他们还是对企业很重要和有影响力。

That's one issue, but the other issue is that founders start a firm, they have a choice to make whether they stay in the firm or not. They will often want to stay in the firm, whatever the world is, whether you're the founder of Sony, or whether you're the founder of Tesla, or whether you're the founder of Apple. These firms, their founders have substantial impact on the firm. They want to stay, but they also face a diversification challenge, they want to hold a diversified portfolio. They need to sell off enough of the firm to gain capital, but they don't want to lose control, and trying to entice them to stay in the firm, because most people believe they are quite powerful and influential for the firm.

I visited quite a many of family firms. It's interesting if you go to a family firm, especially if it's in the third or fourth generation you'll walk in, and I’ve seen this all over the world, they will usually have a picture of the founder up on the wall, in their living room or something. And you'll walk in, and say, oh, there's the founder. It's almost like a religious experience the way they say it, because that person has had such a huge impact on their lives, right? Because they've all grown up wealthy. And that was a visionary person that really changed their whole family's trajectory. And the whole world knows who that founder is, typically, or at least those people in that region know who that founder was, and so people often want the founder to stay, they usually have this notion. We don't want the second generation to stay, right? Because there's a perception of that the heirs must be bad. Actually, some of the biggest, best leaders in the country and the companies have been second and third generation, but that's a different issue for a different day. Because people are well committed, they know the pay to play so they're not myopic etc. But the biggest challenge confronting all of this, whether it's dual-class share or single-class family firms, is this identification challenge.

李明：关于您对青年学者的建议，我能再问一个问题吗？就是我看到您的研究，从家庭企业开始，逐渐扩展到其他领域，包括金融和管理战略binance官网。所以对于年轻学者来说，如果我们想逐渐将研究兴趣扩展到管理战略等其他领域，以及经济学的人想要转向金融，我们应该怎么做呢？您有什么建议吗？

Ming Li: Can I have one more general question regarding your advice for the junior scholars. I see your work, starting with the family in this and gradually expand to other areas, both in finance as well as the management strategy. Do you have any advice for the junior scholars like, what should we do if we want to, gradually, expand our research interests to other research field like management strategy, and for econ people to finance?

Reeb: I think the transition from economics to finance is not that big a transition. Many people view finance as the field of economics, and so the writing style for a journal article is fairly similar and much of the taste is fairly similar, I don't think of that as much of a very difficult transition. But this transition into strategy is very different, because that is a field that has people who have econ-based training, but also sociology-based training, psychology-based training, and so their view of the world, is very different, and their view of writing a paper is very different. Even just the format of the paper is very different for a strategy audience, they're going to have a very short introduction. It's not going to mention the results, and not going to mention identification strategy hardly. It's just going to set the stage. And then they're going to have a six or seven-page hypothesis development section, where they lay out all the arguments, then they're going to give you the methods of the results are going to way back in the back, and they're not going to have many tables, so it's a very different format.

当我想向不同的领域尝试的时候，我不会从一开始就构思一篇文章，而是从一个主题开始思考binance官网。然后，不管出于什么原因对这个问题感兴趣，我都会试着联络那些可能和我不谋而合的人。我一般都是通过看新闻而不是读文献来发现问题，不知道这是不是个好策略，但是对我很有用。

When I think of breaking out into these different spaces, I have never consciously started a paper thinking. I start working on a topic, I may have something in the back of my mind. For whatever reason I’ve got interested in this question and then I’m trying to write to who might think this will be the most interesting to. And Most of my questions don't start with my reading papers in the literature, they start by watching something on the news. That may not be a good strategy, but that's been my strategy.

李：我知道很多有影响力的学者都有类似的观点，是从新闻而不是文献中获得思路binance官网。

Li: I hear a lot of influential scholars saying the same thing, like I started from the news, not from the literature.

Reeb：对我来说，文献可以指导你的思路，但我不想让它一开始就束缚我的想法，我想按照我原本的思路来思考binance官网。之后再去查阅文献，调整我的思路，或者改进我的写作。拿家族企业那篇文章来举例子，我们是从演化经济学的角度开始的，我们认为家族企业不可能全是不好的，一定有一些优点。我们知道它们为什么表现不佳，但不知道它们为什么也可以表现优秀。所以我们想到了远见卓识，这是我们这篇论文的起点。

Reeb: To me, the literature helps guide you thinking about once you've already seen the literature before. However, I don't want it to straight jacket me, I don't want it to constrain how I think about the problem, I want to think about the problem just how I think about it, and then go to the literature that usually changes how I was thinking about a little bit, or helped me refine how I’m going to present it. Back on the family firm stuff, we really started with the notion from an evolutionary economics thing. They just can't be all bad, there must be some good as well. We already knew they're bad, we already knew why they’re bad, we didn't really know why they’re good, we just thought they had to have some good for it. And then our first thought was long-time horizon and then we started looking from there.

Q6：很多我们认为中国特有的问题其实并不一定是中国特有的，世界上其它地方也存在这样的现象binance官网。

Q6: What we think China-specific question may not be China-specific actually, it might be a common thing in the world.

李：我在做一些关于企业家精神和家族企业的研究binance官网。我特别关注这类企业的原因是，中国的家族企业有点特殊，它与中国的文化、社会信任、政治信任和社交网络都有关系。中国是一个人情社会，很多事情都是建立在关系之上的。家族们有他们的关系，在很多地方，整个地方的生意都是由一个家族控制的。市场也存在一些均衡，比如新公司很难进入，生产率很低的老公司不会退出。但我会想这是不是一个过于具有中国特殊性的研究问题，其它国家的人也会对这种研究感兴趣吗？

Li: I start to do something on entrepreneurship and family business. The reason I particularly think on their business is because family business in China is kind of special, it has to do a lot with the cultural and social trust, political trust, and social networking in China. China is a relational society, a lot of things have to be built on relations. Families have their connections, also we see in a lot of places, the whole local business is controlled by a single family. There are some general equilibria fell on the market, like new firms are hard to enter, and old firms don’t exit, even though they have low productivity. Every time when I come to this kind of question, I started to wonder whether it’s a too specific research question of China. Will people from outside world also be interested in this kind of research?

Reeb：我不认为这是一个中国特有的问题binance官网。Mara Faccio（普渡大学克兰纳特管理学院讲席教授）提过，这种现象在拉丁美洲、意大利和南欧也非常突出。还有些人发现非洲企业也存在这种现象，印度、巴基斯坦也不例外。我认为这很常见。Mara Faccio来自一个非常政治化的国家，见过很多类似的事情，我想你的研究会和她的有很多共鸣，她甚至可能会是你的审稿人。

Reeb: I don't think this is a China-specific problem. Mara Faccio said that this is quite prominent in Latin America, in Italy, and in southern Europe. There are also some guys who talk about these for African firms, you could say it's quite prominent in African firms as well. When you read papers on family ownership in India and Pakistan, they would say the same thing there. I think this is a very common thing. Mara Faccio also came from a very political economy, viewing these types of things, so I think your work will resonate with her quite a lot. I would suspect that people who work in her space or she will be referees.