We incorporate econometrics approach into panel data methods to examine the impact of the board competence on the performance in Chinese banks. By investigating the biographical background of directors in the 20 largest banks during the period 2008 to 2016, our estimate shows that the board of directors play a prominent role in the performance. Especially, both the education background and the management experience have negative impact on the performance.

This study provides the first empirical evidence on the relationship between the chairman of the board of directors (COB) and corporate financial performance. Using a sample of Chinese A listed firms between 2008-2017, we find reliable evidence that the COB turnover improves corporate financial performance. Moreover, the existence of a majority shareholder (Majority) positively influences corporate financial performance, while firm nature (private majority shareholder or public majority shareholder)(Private) may not.

The deviation of control right and cash flow right is a common problem of corporate governance in East Asian companies.With Taiwan's listed companies as samples, this paper discusses whether the degree of deviation of control right and cash flow right will affect the company’s earnings distribution policy. The results reveal that, regardless of using stock right or the number of directors to measure the control right, companies of higher degree of deviation of control right and cash flow right have higher proportions of employee bonuses against the shareholder dividends, In this case, the company is more biased in the care of the employees at the expense of the minority shareholders. The company is especially likely to exploit the minority shareholders by controlling the board of directors and paying cash dividends to employees. As investors believe that the controlling shareholders of companies with high degree deviation of control right and cash flow right, and high proportion of employee bonuses are intended to exploit the minority shareholders, such companies have significantly lower declared earnings distribution remuneration compared with companies with low degree of deviation and low employee bonuses.

We empirically evaluate 20 prominent contributions to a broad range of areas in the empirical corporate finance literature. We assemble the necessary data and then apply a single, simple econometric method, the connected-groups approach of Abowd, Karmarz, and Margolis (1999), to appraise the extent to which prevailing empirical specifications explain variation of the dependent variable, differ in composition of fit arising from various classes of independent variables, and exhibit resistance to omitted variable bias and other endogeneity problems. In particular, we identify and estimate the role of observed and unobserved firm- and manager-specific characteristics in determining primary features of corporate governance, financial policy, payout policy, investment policy, and performance. Observed firm characteristics do best in explaining market leverage and CEO pay level and worst for takeover defenses and outcomes. Observed manager characteristics have relatively high power to explain CEO contract design and low power for firm focus and investment policy. Estimated specifications without firm and manager fixed effects do poorly in explaining variation in CEO duality, corporate control variables, and capital expenditures, and best in explaining executive pay level, board size, market leverage, corporate cash holdings, and firm risk. Including manager and firm fixed effects, along with firm and manager observables, delivers the best fit for dividend payout, the propensity to adopt antitakeover defenses, firm risk, board size, and firm focus. In terms of source, unobserved manager attributes deliver a high proportion of explained variation in the dependent variable for executive wealth-performance sensitivity, board independence, board size, and sensitivity of expected executive compensation to firm risk. In contrast, unobserved firm attributes provide a high proportion of variation explained for dividend payout, antitakeover defenses, book and market leverage, and corporate cash holdings. In part, these results suggest where empiricists could look for better proxies for what current theory identifies as important and where theorists could focus in building new models that encompass economic forces not contained in existing models. Finally, we assess the relevance of omitted variables and endogeneity for conventional empirical designs in the various subfields. Including manager and firm fixed effects significantly alters inference on primary explanatory variables in 17 of the 20 representative subfield specifications.

In this study we examine the incentives for listed family controlled firms in China to establish political connections and their organizational structure as measured by shareholding concentration and composition of board of directors. We hypothesize and find that listed family firms are more likely to establish political connections when the local markets are less developed and the governments are more powerful in allocating economic resources. In particular, firms are more likely to build political connections when local governments suffer from severe budgetary deficits, when they tend to rely on discretionary charges and administrative penalties for raising revenues, and when they have more leeway in granting business subsidies. We also find that controlling shareholders of family firms with political connections tend to concentrate their shareholding and dominate the board of directors so that they can make deals with government officials in secrecy and enjoy the benefits exclusively among themselves.

The paper, based on the samples of 2003, makes empirical analyses of China listed companies from the perspective of Chinese Corporate Governance Index ( ) and its six dimensions: the index of controlling shareholders’ behaviors, board governance index, top management governance index, information disclosure index, stakeholders’ governance index, supervisors committee governance index, and find that is positively associated with return on assets (ROA), net assets per share (NAPS), earnings per share (EPS), operating cash flow per share (OCFPS), total assets turnover (TAV), rate of total assets growth (ITA) and Z-score. These indicate that good corporate governance mechanisms improve profitability, stock expansion ability, operating efficiency, growth and development potential, as well as financial flexibility and safety of listed companies. Corporate governance mechanisms of controlling shareholders, board of directors, top management, information disclosure, stakeholders and supervisors committee are largely responsible for decision-making and decision-execution mechanisms, and furthermore, they have direct and profound effects on the performance and value of listed companies.

This study investigates the effectiveness of the dual-board corporate governance mechanism on enterprise risk management and financial stability in emerging markets. Taking into account both market risk and total risk, we find activities of both boards, board of directors and the supervisory board, in these companies affect corporate risk-taking behaviors significantly, but shed light on different aspects. These findings are of interest and counter-intuitive since prior research concludes ineffectiveness of the dual-board system in China. More detailed issues, such as the endogeneity of board activities and characteristics, reciprocal causality between board behaviors and risk-taking issues, effects of political/governmental policies and ownership structure of controlling shareholders on board behaviors, asymmetrical monitoring effects of two boards on companies with various levels of financial risk, and non-linear effects of meeting frequencies of two boards, are addressed to help better understand the corporate governance-enterprise risk management relationship.

This paper is the first attempt in the literature to study the relationship between corporate governance and corporate growth. By developing an econometric model, this paper empirically studied the relationship between corporate governance and growth capability of China’s listed companies based on the panel data of 510 listed companies in Chinese manufacturing industry from the year 2001 to 2007. Main findings and contributions of this paper are as follows: ownership concentration is significantly negatively associated with growth capability; there is a significant negative relationship between equity restriction ratio and growth capability; growth capability of non-state-holding company is stronger than that of state-holding company, but this finding has no statistical significance; the stronger are debt solvency and debt financing ability, the stronger is growth capability; scale of board of directors and proportion of independent directors are significantly negatively associated with growth capability; combination of chairman of board of directors and CEO is beneficial for enhancing growth capability; management annual salary is significantly positively associated with growth capability; proportion of management shareholding has a negative relationship with growth capability, but this has no statistical significance; competition of market for corporate control and perfection degree of law basis and interest protection of medium-small investors are positively associated with growth capability, but these findings have no statistical significance; there is a significant positive relationship between product market competition and growth capability. Based on the above conclusions, this paper put forward some relevant policy recommendations from perspective of corporate governance for enhancing growth capability of Chinese listed companies.