The determinants of employee stock ownership: French case

Abstract

The present study scrutinizes the factors affecting the practice of employee stock ownership. This work sheds light on the role and contribution of this practice to enhance the corporate governance systems. Our study uses a sample of 216 listed French companies in 2010. The empirical approach is a linear regression used to examine the relation between the dependent variable and the independent variables. The results show that the large companies are the most likely to practice the ESO and this is developed by a reduction in debt, the dividend distribution, and the tax rate. The focal point of this work is to go beyond the simple scope of the existence of the employee stock ownership and is interested in the conditions of its development in the French companies.