Walid Faris
PhD Candidate in Finance
DRM, University of Paris Dauphine – PSL
Researcher in the Family Business and Long-Term Investment Chair
Assistant Teacher in Corporate Finance
Conducting thesis under the supervision of Mrs. Edith Ginglinger
Intersections of Corporate Control, Governance, Private Equity and Economic Impact

About Me

I am a fourth-year PhD candidate in Finance at Université Paris Dauphine-PSL, supervised by Prof. Edith Ginglinger.

I study who owns firms and why it matters. My research asks how ownership shapes the way monetary policy reaches investment, how private equity creates value, and how competition drives productivity.

My work rests on firm-level data at scale. I built a global panel of the ultimate owners of firms in 207 economies from Orbis, and I work with French administrative microdata (CASD/INSEE).

In summer 2025 I was an Economist Intern in the IMF Fund Internship Program, in the Middle East and Central Asia Department. The project became IMF Working Paper No. 2026/143, co-authored with Etibar Jafarov and Umang Rawat.

At Dauphine I teach corporate finance as an Assistant Teacher, and I am a researcher in the Scientific Committee of Family Businesses and Long-Term Investment.

Research interests: corporate finance, ownership and control, family firms, private equity, monetary policy transmission, competition and productivity.

Contact: walid.faris@dauphine.psl.eu

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Research

Job market paper

The Ownership Channel of Monetary Policy

Single-authored. Working paper, 2026.

Who owns a firm decides how much of an ECB rate surprise reaches its investment.

Abstract. We show that who owns a firm shapes how its investment responds to monetary policy. Matching the accounts of over four hundred thousand firms in twelve euro-area countries to their ultimate owner and to high-frequency ECB surprises over 2008–2022, we find that firms whose owner resides abroad cut capital by about two log points per standard deviation of a tightening surprise more than firms in the same country and year whose owner resides at home. The cut is a cut in project starts, is the same for owners inside and outside the euro area, does not depend on the firm's balance sheet, and appears in the same firm once its owner crosses the border. At home, family-owned firms are the most protected and formal owners the least, an ordering that disappears abroad. The evidence is consistent with an owner-specific hurdle rate, which a market-rate move enters fully for owners who judge the firm against outside alternatives and barely for families at home. Through foreign ownership alone, one standard deviation of tightening forgoes about four percent of a year's corporate investment, from one percent in Germany to ten in Austria, over a third of it through owners elsewhere in the euro area.

Working papers

A Global Panel of Ultimate Firm Ownership

Working paper, 2026.

A validated panel of ultimate owners for 207 economies, 2007-2023, with the family as a first-class owner.

Abstract. We build a panel of the ultimate owner of every firm in the Orbis registry universe, 207 economies, 2007 to 2023. For each firm we retrace the control chain, holding by holding, to the shareholder in control at the majority and at the blocking threshold. Owners are then pooled across the entities they hold, so that a family, a group, a fund or a state appears as one owner wherever it controls a firm, and each owner is classified in a representative typology and located by country. The panel covers private firms, where most corporate capital sits and where ownership research has had no data. Family control runs at 63 percent of firm-years, against one tenth in listed samples, and control crosses borders more often than consolidated accounts or investment statistics record. The panel sorts any firm outcome by who controls the firm and where that owner sits.

Private Equity and Pre-Investment Ownership Structure

Working paper, January 2026. French administrative data (CASD). Presented at the 42nd Conference of the French Finance Association (AFFI), Clermont-Ferrand, June 2026.

Minority and majority private-equity deals create value differently, and family ownership decides which works.

Abstract. We show that corporate control shapes the value-creation channel of private equity. Across 2,507 first private equity transactions in French firms over 1994-2023, minority investments generate stronger growth and leverage responses than majority buyouts, while majority deals are the only configuration in which we observe clear margin improvement, consistent with majority control enabling restructuring and minority stakes acting as a growth-capital channel. This trade-off varies with pre-investment ownership. Minority PE in family-controlled firms generates stronger growth without further profitability deterioration, while in non-family firms minority investments induce expansion without operational discipline, making majority control more valuable. The evidence is consistent with a complementarity between external PE capital and incumbent family governance that does not arise when ownership is more dispersed.

Policy research

Competition and Productivity in Middle East and Central Asia: What Role Do Tariffs Play?

With Etibar Jafarov and Umang Rawat. IMF Working Paper No. 2026/143, July 2026.

Tariffs raise markups, competition and institutions lower them, and competition raises productivity and growth across ME&CA.

Abstract. Market competition remains weaker than in other emerging markets across much of the Middle East and Central Asia (ME&CA), holding back productivity and income growth. Using firm-level data from Orbis for 2002-2021, this paper studies the evolution of market competition in ME&CA economies and examines how trade policy and institutions shape competitive dynamics. We find that market power remains elevated and uneven across ME&CA, with particularly high markups in resource-intensive activities, selected service sectors, and, more recently, manufacturing in the Caucasus and Central Asia (CCA). Higher tariff protection is systematically associated with faster growth in markups, indicating that trade barriers weaken competitive pressure, while improvements in competition policy, anti-corruption frameworks, and property rights are linked to declining market power and hence increasing competition. Although productivity gaps remain large and persistent, stronger competition is associated with faster firm-level productivity growth and higher GDP per capita growth, with these effects particularly pronounced in CCA economies. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of policies aimed at reducing trade barriers and strengthening institutional and competition policy frameworks to foster competition, raise productivity, and support long-term income growth in the ME&CA region.

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