This paper reports on an empirical analysis of 42,094 public/private companies in China and 21 Eastern European countries to grasp the actual state and determinants of board gender diversity in emerging market firms. We confirmed that firms in these countries are comparable to those in advanced...

This paper identifies a positive causal effect of board gender diversity on firm performance by utilizing unique historical events in China. Specifically, the Famine resulted in an evident gender gap in the supply of qualified directors of certain cohorts. Since the shocks differ in both gender...

This paper investigates how institutional environment like property rights protection influences the size and composition of corporate boards, and further, how board structure impacts firm performance in China. Using a World Bank survey of 2,400 public and private firms across 18 Chinese cities,...

We provide the first comprehensive and robust evidence on the relationship between board independence and firm performance in China. We find that independent directors have an overall positive effect on firm operating performance in China. Our findings are robust to a battery of tests, including...

Corporate governance (gongsi zhili) is a concept whose time has come in China, and the institution of the independent director is a major part of this concept. Policymakers in several countries such as the United Kingdom and Japan have turned to independent directors as an important element of...

This article empirically investigates the impacts of the board’s rejection of shareholder proposals on corporate value and the appropriate approach to regulation. Using a hand-collected dataset on shareholder-proposal-rejection incidents in China, I find that a rejection decision would on...

My study examines how institutional features of transition economies, i.e., goverment ownership, legal investor protection, and government regulation distort the choice of directors, and the firm value impact of independent director and political-connected director in China. We find that SOEs...

Using a sample of 50 largest Chinese banks during the period of 2003-2010, we explore a comprehensive set of board characteristics (size, composition and functioning of the board) and analyze their impacts on bank performance and bank asset quality in China. We find that the number of board...

This paper investigates two successive reforms in China -- 2001 board independence and 2005 share structure -- to study their joint effects on corporate performance as ownership concentration declines. We find that both independent directors and ownership concentration ratios are individually...

Using a large sample of Chinese firms, we examine performance differences between firms with female and male chairs and the channels through which such differences arise. After controlling for the presence of female CEOs and non-chair female directors, we find that chairwoman firms perform...