Institutions, board structure, and corporate performance: Evidence from Chinese firms

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 2400 public and private firms across 18 Chinese cities, I fi...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Chen, Jonas Tao
Other Authors: Nanyang Business School
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/82519
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/40190
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
Description
Summary: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 2400 public and private firms across 18 Chinese cities, I find robust evidence that weaker helping hand from the government is associated with a higher number and proportion of outsiders on the board, after controlling for the effects of firm complexity, growth opportunities, CEO characteristics, ownership, and the potential endogeneity concern. Furthermore, the results show that when firms are operating in a weak property rights environment, more outsiders improve corporate performance.