Villalonga, Belen

About

Belén Villalonga is the William R. Berkley Professor in Management and Finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business. She joined Stern in 2012 and previously was a faculty member at Harvard Business School from 2001 to 2012. Her work focuses on family business, corporate strategy, and corporate governance. She has extensively studied how family ownership and control influence firms’ governance, strategy, and performance, as well as corporate diversification. Professor Villalonga has developed and taught courses and programs for graduate and undergraduate students, as well as for executives and business families. Her research has been published in leading academic journals, cited approximately 20,000 times, and featured in major international media outlets. She holds a Ph.D. in Management and an M.A. in Economics from UCLA, where she was a Fulbright Scholar, and a second Ph.D. in Business Economics from the Complutense University of Madrid. Fluent in Spanish, English, and French, and conversant in Portuguese and Italian, she also serves or has served as an independent director on the boards of several global companies across various industries.

Selected publications

• Governance of Family Firms

  Annual Review of Financial Economics · 2015-12-07 · 233 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We review what the financial economics literature has to say about the unique ways in which the following three classic agency problems manifest themselves in family firms: (a) shareholders versus managers, (b) controlling (family) shareholders versus noncontrolling shareholders, and (c) shareholders versus creditors. We also call attention to a fourth agency problem that is unique to family firms: the conflict of interest between family shareholders and the family at large, which can be thought…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Corporate divestitures and family control

  Strategic Management Journal · 2014-08-18 · 193 citations

  articleSenior author

  This paper investigates the relationship between divestitures and firm value in family firms. Using hand‐collected data on a sample of over 30,000 firm‐year observations, we find that family firms are less likely than non‐family firms to undertake divestitures, especially when these companies are managed by family rather than non‐family‐ CEOs . However, we then establish that the divestitures undertaken by family firms, predominantly those run by family‐ CEOs , are associated with higher post‐di…

  PublisherDOI

• The role of institutional development in the prevalence and performance of entrepreneur and family-controlled firms

  Journal of Corporate Finance · 2015-01-14 · 114 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Family ownership

  Oxford Review of Economic Policy · 2020 · 99 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This article reviews the existing literature about the most prevalent form of corporate ownership around the world: ownership by individuals—particularly founders—and families. We summarize the existing evidence about the prevalence and persistence of family ownership around the world, along with its impact on performance—both financial and non-financial—relative to other types of corporate ownership. We discuss how and why these empirical facts and findings come about—why owners in gen…

  PublisherDOI

• Financial Performance of Family Firms

  2014-01-01 · 82 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Awards & honors

• 25th Anniversary Award for the most influential paper publis…
• Second Prize, 2010-2012 Pearson Best Paper Prize, Financial…
• Junior Faculty Recipient, Wyss Award for Excellence in Mento…
• Standard Life Investments Finance Prize for the best paper i…
• Andre Hoffman Visiting Professor of Family Enterprise, INSEA…

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