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The purpose of this paper is to analyse the determinants of Portuguese firms’ performance.

To achieve this aim, the authors used data from 37 non-financial firms in the period between 2010 and 2015. Three dependent variables were tested and the estimation of the model using the Generalised Method of Moments shows that internal, external and institutional factors are important to explain the performance of firms listed in Euronext Lisbon.

The determinants of firm performance vary depending on the variable used to measure the performance. Specifically, the results show that when the authors use a market variable of performance, the firm-specific variables are not so important to explain performance. The macroeconomic factors, including the investor’s sentiment and insider ownership, more effectively explain the firm’s performance. The evidence suggests that the determinants of firm performance change according to the way in which different stakeholders appreciate firm performance.

The main contribution of such approach is to show that internal and external factors influence performance measures in distinct ways, thus helping managers who are expected to make decisions according to the investors’ expectations. It provides initial guidelines for policy makers to understand how to improve the performance of their firms using firm-specific factors. Additionally, this work also demonstrates that the firm’s characteristics, macroeconomics and governance factors could affect the Portuguese firms’ performance, conveying a valuable contribution for investors.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between board of directors’ characteristics and performance in family businesses. It offers evidence to the question of whether a family firm (FF) differs from a non-family firm and looks at the possibility of asymmetrical effects between periods of stability and economic adversity.

A panel data approach was applied to a sample of Portuguese firms listed the on Euronext Lisbon exchange between 2002 and 2013.

The results show that FFs are likely to have a lower proportion of independent members and higher gender diversity on their boards than non-family firms. FF performance is positively related to ownership concentration and gender diversity. There are performance premiums for family businesses, which have more gender diversity than their counterparts. These effects also depend on whether the economy is in recession. The evidence suggests that the presence of women on the board and the leverage and size of the FFs have a more significant impact on the performance in periods of economic adversity.

One limitation of this study is the small size of the sample as it was drawn from the Euronext Lisbon exchange, a small stock exchange market.

This study provides input into the academic discussion on corporate governance and FF, an area which is in need of research. In addition, the authors examine this issue in conjunction with generalised economic adversity, focusing on the possible asymmetrical effects that the nature of the board of directors may have on performance in periods of stability and those of economic adversity. The role of board of directors is crucial to the understanding of corporate behaviour and the setting of the policy that regulates corporate activities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of investor sentiment on share returns, exploring whether this effect is different for public family and non-family firms.

The author uses the European Economic Sentiment Indicator data, from Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs as a proxy for investor sentiment and focused on the share returns of family and non-family firms, using panel data methodology.

Using data from listed family and non-family firms for the period between 1999 and 2011, in accordance with behavioural finance theory, the results indicate that there is a negative relationship between sentiment and share returns. In addition, the author found no difference between family and non-family firms in what concerns the effect of sentiment on share returns. The evidence also suggests that young, large and medium growth firms are most affected by sentiment. Finally, the results suggest that the evidence concerning the relationship between sentiment and returns is sensitive to the proxy used to measure the sentiment.

A limitation of this study is the small size of the sample, which is due to the small size of the Portuguese stock market, the Euronext Lisbon.

This paper offers some insights into the effect of investor sentiment on the share returns in the context of public family firms, a strand of finance that is scarcely developed. It also contributes to the analysis of a small European country, with a high concentration of equity ownership.

El propósito de este trabajo es examinar el efecto de la confianza de los inversores en las acciones devoluciones, explorando si este efecto es diferente para las empresas familiares públicas y no familiares.

Utilizamos los datos de los indicadores de sentimiento económico de Europa, de la Dirección General de Asuntos Económicos y Financieros (DG ECFIN) como sustituto de la confianza de los inversores y se centran en la cuota de los retornos de las empresas familiares y no familiares, utilizando datos de panel metodología.

El uso de los datos de las empresas que figuran familiares y no familiares para el período entre 1999 y 2011, los resultados indican que no existe una relación entre el sentimiento y la cuota de retorno, que está de acuerdo con la teoría financiera estándar, que predice que los precios de las acciones reflejan el descuento valor de los flujos de caja esperados y que la irracionalidad de los inversores se eliminan por árbitros. Además, no encontramos ninguna diferencia entre las empresas familiares y no familiares en lo que se refiere al efecto de la confianza en las acciones devoluciones. Por último, la evidencia sugiere que las grandes empresas y las empresas que pagan dividendos son los más afectados por el sentimiento.

Una limitación de este estudio es el pequeño tamaño de la muestra, que se deriva del pequeño tamaño del mercado de valores portugués, la Euronext Lisbon.

Este artículo ofrece algunas ideas sobre el efecto de la confianza de los inversores en la cuota de rentabilidad en el contexto de las empresas familiares públicos, un mechón de financiación que apenas se desarrolla, y contribuye al análisis de un pequeño país europeo, con alta concentración de participación en el capital.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between debt policy and performance among family firms (FF), providing evidence on whether FF differ from non-family firms (NFF). It also focusses on the possibility of asymmetrical debt policy impact on performance between periods of stability and economic adversity.

The paper employs panel data regression, considering a sample of Portuguese listed firms for the period between 1999 and 2014.

Overall, the author find evidence that debt contributes negatively to firms’ performance, which is consistent with the pecking order prediction, and that the relationship between debt and performance do not differ significantly between FF and NFF. After addressing the endogeneity issue, the author conclude that firms’ performance is negatively influenced by both short- and long-term debt. Considering the total debt, the negative relationship between the two variables differs from family and non-family companies. The results show that age and size influences positively, and the independence of the board directors influences negatively the firms’ performance. The empirical findings suggest that under economic adversity, the firms’ performance is negatively affected. Finally, the author conclude that return on assets appear to fit better than return on equity or MB when you want to relate debt and firm performance.

A limitation of this study is the small size of the Euronext Lisbon that results in a small sample.

This paper offers some insights on the relationship between debt policy and firm performance from a country with weak protection of minority shareholders, concentrated ownership and a significant family control. It also gives the opportunity to analyse whether firm performance differs according to market conditions.

This study aims to evaluate the performance of the Portuguese fund managers by examining the selectivity and market timing skills of 51 Portuguese mutual funds from June 2002 to March 2012.

The authors assess empirically the performance of a sample of funds by applying the unconditional and conditional models of Treynor and Mazuy (1966) and Henriksson and Merton (1981).

The results suggest that, overall, the Portuguese mutual funds do not possess selectivity or timing skills. However, regardless of the model used, the domestic equity funds exhibit a statistically significant market timing ability. Furthermore, the domestic and North American equity funds display positive selectivity during bull markets and timing skills during bear markets. Additionally, there is some evidence that older funds are better stock pickers than younger funds.

To address some of the limitations of this study, the authors suggest for further research correcting the Treynor and Mazuy (1966) model for the convexity cost of replicating Merton’s (1981) option approach. Additionally, for further research, we suggest using a bigger sample, higher frequency data, as such data may lead to higher frequency of timing ability as proposed by Bollen and Busse (2001). To overcome some of the limitations of traditional models, future research may consider using Jiang’s (2003) nonparametric test, as it is not affected by manager’s risk aversion, or Ferson and Khang (2002) conditional performance evaluation using portfolios holdings.

The authors contribute to the current literature by extending the period of study to 10 years in comparison to previous studies; extending the sample of funds to 51; addressing, for the first time in this context, the importance of public information on funds’ performance, through the comparison of unconditional and conditional models of Treynor and Mazuy’s (1966) and Henriksson and Merton’s (1981); and, for the first time in the Portuguese context, analysing the relationship between funds’ size, age and market cycles and selectivity and market timing skills.

This study aims to analyze the returns obtained from companies with strong growth potential (growth stocks) and the returns from companies with quite low stock prices, but with high value (value stocks).

The sample comprises monthly data, from January 2002 to December 2016, from seven countries, Germany, France, Switzerland, the UK, Portugal, the USA and Japan. The authors have used linear regression models for three different periods, the pre-crisis, subprime crisis and post-crisis period.

The results point out that the performance of value and growth stocks differs from different periods surrounding the global financial crisis. In fact, for six countries, value stocks outperformed growth stocks in the period that precedes the subprime crisis and during the crisis, this tendency remained only for France, Portugal and Japan. This trend changed in the period following the crisis. The results also show that investor sentiment has a robust significance in value and growth stock returns, mostly in the period before the crisis, highlighting that the investor sentiment is more significant in the moments that the value stocks outperformed.

As far as the authors know, this is the first work that, taking into account the future research lines of Capaul et al. (1993), investigates whether the results obtained by those authors remain current, meeting the authors’ challenge and covering the gap of recent studies on the performance of value and growth stocks. Besides, the authors have introduced a new country, heavily punished by both the global financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis to understand whether there are significant differences in investment styles and whether this is related to the different economies. Also, in this context, the authors were pioneers in adding investor sentiment as an exogenous variable in the influence of stock returns.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of investor sentiment (ISENT) on the market reaction to dividend change announcements.

The author used the European Economic Sentiment Indicator data, from Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs, as a proxy for ISENT and focus on the market reaction to dividend change announcements, using panel data methodology.

Using data from three European markets, the results indicate that ISENT has some influence on the market reaction to dividend change announcements, for two of the three analysed markets. Globally, no evidence was found of ISENT influencing the market reaction to dividend change announcements for the Portuguese market. However, evidence was found that the positive share price reaction to dividend increases enlarges with sentiment, in the case of the UK markets, whereas the negative share price reaction to dividend decreases reduces with sentiment, in the French market.

The author had no access to dividend forecasts, so, the findings are based on naïve dividend changes and not unexpected change dividends.

This paper offers some insights on the effect of ISENT on the market reaction to firms' news, a strand of finance that is scarcely developed and contributes to the analysis of European markets that are in need of research. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first study to analyse the effect of ISENT on the market reaction to dividend news, in the context of European markets.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the ownership of public firms is related to accounting and market performance, comparing family and non-family listed firms.

The paper uses regression analysis, considering a sample of Portuguese family and non-family firms (NFF) for the period between 1999 and 2010.

Overall, the results show that family firms (FF) are older, are more indebted and have higher debt costs than NFF. However, they present lower levels of risk. The evidence suggests that FF outperform NFF when the author considers a market performance measure. The market performance of family-controlled firms is more sensitive to the crisis periods and age, compared to their counterparts. The empirical findings suggest that under economic adversity, the performance is especially compromised by the firms' age.

A limitation of this study is the small size of the sample, which derives from the small size of the Portuguese stock market, the Euronext Lisbon.

This paper offers some insights on the ownership of public firms and firm performance by investigating a small European economy. The study also contributes to the stream of firm performance, considering new independent variables as determinants of firm performance, such as operational risk. Finally, the study examines the interaction between ownership and performance under both steady and adverse economic conditions, giving the opportunity to analyze whether firm performance differs according to market conditions.