Founding-Family Ownership and Firm Performance:Evidence from the S&P500RONALD C. ANDERSON and DAVID M. REEB*ABSTRACTWe investigate the relation between founding-family ownership and firm per-formance. We find that family ownership is both prevalent and substantial; fa-milies are present in one-third of the S&P500 and account for 18 percent of outstanding equity. Contrary to our conjecture, we find family firms perform better than nonfamily firms. Additional analysis reveals that the relation be-tween family holdings and firm performance is nonlinear and that when fa-mily members serve as CEO, performance is better than with outside CEOs. Overall, our results are inconsistent with the hypothesis that minority share-holders are adversely affected by family ownership, suggesting that family ownership is a n effective organizational structure.