In this paper, we investigate the agency costs of government ownership and their impact on corporate governance and firm value. China is used as a laboratory because of the prevalent state shareholdings in exchange-listed firms. In this context, we specifically consider the trade-offs involved in the voluntary formation of an audit committee when the controlling shareholder is the state. The decision to improve corporate governance (in this case, introduce an audit committee) is shown to be value relevant and a function of existing agency relationships and non-trivial implementation costs. Our findings are robust to the level of pyramid groups, the ownership-control wedge, and financial leverage. The research adds to the debate regarding the effect of government shareholdings on corporate culture and performance - a topic that has taken on renewed importance in recent times.

Following the economic theory of venture capital financing, a corporate governance framework would be economically efficient for VC investments if it can help to reduce the agency costs resulted from information and incentive problems. As a highly successful model in global VC industry, the standard VC investment contracts in the Silicon Valley practice largely embody such framework. By analyzing the currently effective laws and regulations of China that are relevant to the investments by foreign venture capitalists, this paper paints a practical picture of how can foreign VC investors do business in China. It is shown that, the recent (starting from 2005) outflow of a set of new legal norms can be seen as a dividing point for the VC investing practice in China – the previously prevalent mode “offshore structuring, offshore listing” is challenged, and both the investment and exit are gradually pulled onshore. This being said, the current Chinese laws and institutions still cannot fully entertain the contracting and governance model prevalent in the Silicon Valley VC investment practices, and in this light, this paper goes on to discuss, in particular, various strategies that may be availed by foreign VC firms to tap and/or subvert the Chinese laws and regulations when financing Chinese new ventures. Finally, under the theme of globalization and crossborder corporate governance convergence, this paper provides a general comment on the currently applicable Chinese legal framework, and stresses the importance of converging towards efficient legal rules through contracts in the global competitive village.

In this paper, we examine the cost of equity capital for politically connected firms. After controlling for several firm- and country-level determinants, our results show that politically connected firms have a lower cost of equity capital than their nonconnected peers. Our results are robust to alternative measures and proxies for the cost of equity capital. We thus provide strong evidence that investors require a lower cost of capital for politically connected firms, suggesting that these firms are generally considered to be less risky than non-connected firms. Our findings imply that the benefits of political connections outweigh their costs. We conjecture that this perception is fueled by the soft budget constraints generally enjoyed by politically connected firms, and by their lower default probability, given the assurance of corporate bailout in the event of financial downturns.

In a series of cross-country comparisons, we show that national culture is statistically significant in differentiating countries with different corporate governance systems. Using the Schwartz cultural value model and data on corporate governance systems, we analyze the impact of national culture on six dimensions of corporate governance. Countries that have stronger emphasis on the dimensions of Embeddedness, Hierarchy and Mastery are more likely to have a bank-based system, countries with a stronger emphasis on Autonomy, Egalitarianism and Harmony tend to have market-based systems. The findings suggest several implications for the ongoing debate on convergence and divergence of corporate governance systems.

In contrast with the evidence for the US and UK, the percentage of Chinese firms that pay dividends is increasing. We find that the level of dividend payment is positively related to ownership concentration but is negatively related to the percentage of outside directors. We further determine that after paying dividends, these firms issue new equity more often than non-payer while enjoying higher market-to-book ratios. These findings suggest that dividends might substitute for board monitoring for Chinese firms and hence contributes to resolving the conflict of interest between the controlling and minority shareholders.

In this paper, we examine investors’ valuations of corporate cash hoardings and dividend payout to explicitly isolate the monitoring effect from the information effect of corporate disclosure activity. In a sample of 951 firms from 38 countries, we find that cash resources are rewarded with higher market valuation when greater disclosure improves a firm’s transparency. These results suggest that extensive disclosure enhances external monitoring and thus limits insiders’ ability to accumulate cash to expropriate minority shareholders. In further support of the monitoring effect of strong disclosure, we find that dividend payout is valued at a premium in opaque firms where cash is more vulnerable to consumption of private control benefits. Overall, our findings support the disciplinary role of firm-level disclosure policy in corporate governance mechanisms.

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.

In this paper we set out to show that China has certain significant specificities in terms of the gradual (i.e. "step by step") approach it has followed in implementing reforms affecting its financial system. This is in contrast with the traditional shock or "big bang" therapy adopted by other emerging or transition countries, on the basis of what is known as the Washington Consensus, which notoriously prescribes the immediate, wholesale introduction of market-oriented systems through large-scale liberalisations and privatizations. Nevertheless, as we will endeavour to demonstrate the process of reform of China's financial system has not prevented problems of financial fragility from arising in the banking sector, and of corporate governance for firms, such as to threaten the very sustainability of growth in the future.

This paper investigates the replacement and appointment of top executives in a business highly involved by the government and their consequences on firm performance and corporate governance. It provides a dynamic setting to test the value of political connection as prior studies do not discern government interests and incorporate ambiguous institutions and self-selection problems by cross-section test. Using data of China’s listed state-owned enterprises (SOEs), this paper finds that the state owner is more likely to replace top executives and appoint a politically-connected executive when SOEs encounter economic distress such as poor ROA, earnings loss, high financial risk, or political distress such as SEC regulation violation. It implies that the politically-connected executive may be considered helpful by the government in response to firm distress. Further, it is found that the political top executives improve firm performance following their appointments and reduce the frequency of executives’ illegal actions, by initiating modification of internal governance structures and mitigating manager’s discretion. And those firms do not have preferential access to resources or government assistances such as fiscal subsidies, tax benefits, or the credit market. All these findings support that political executives could serve as a disciplinary or monitoring mechanism in a political economy lack of external market for corporate control and legal protection for investors, instead of being only a form of bail-out. Their efficacy is based on their administrative power, regulatory expertise and accountability to the government interests. These results provide better understanding of government interests and their impact on corporate governance.

This paper explores the empirical results of the implementation of an independent director system in China, and identifies the advisory role of the board. The results show that firms implement board independence by adding extra members, instead of removing inside directors, except in the case where the board size (before the recruitment of independent directors) has already been too large. It has been found that complex (large and diversified) firms prefer a large board with more independent directors on the board. However, the largest shareholders have a strong incentive to organise a small and insider-controlled board. Although there is a negative relationship between board size, board independence and firm performance, Tobin’s Q increases in relation to board size and board independence for complex firms.