Firm-level determinants of gender diversity in the boardrooms: Evidence from some emerging markets

This paper examines the determinants of board gender diversity in the context of emerging economies. Specifically, we investigate the impact of organizational characteristics on gender diversity in the boardrooms of Brazilian, Russian, Indian and Chinese firms and compare our findings with a control sample from US and UK. Analysing data for 1002 firms between a period of 2005 and 2012, we find some similarities between developed and emerging economies on the factors determining women representation on boards. In particular, we observe board gender diversity is positively related to the firm size, and it is inversely related to corporate risk across both emerging and developed economies. Family control affects positively board gender diversity only in India, China, UK and US. However, in contrast to developed countries, there is some evidence to suggest that state ownership has a negative effect on board gender diversity in India and Russia.     

The Impact of the Dual Board Structure and Board Diversity: Evidence from Chinese Initial Public Offerings (IPOs)

Chinese listed companies have a two-tier (dual) governance structure that comprises a supervisory board/committee (SB) and the board of directors (BoD). However, as there is no hierarchical relationship between them, the two boards are independent. This is different from the governance mechanism in Continental Europe in which the SB appoints the directors of the management board; in this sense, the Chinese two-tier governance structure is unique. We investigate the impact of governance characteristics and ownership structure on gender diversity of both the BoD and the SB for a sample of 892 Chinese Initial Public Offerings floated in both the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges. We find that the average proportion of female directors and female SB members on the BoD and the SB are 10 and 22 %, respectively. Using both static and dynamic panel data methods, we find that there is no significant impact of board structure on gender diversity in China. However, we find a positive and significant relationship between SB size and gender diversity. We also find that the higher the state ownership, the lower the female representation on both boards. Finally, our findings show that there is a bi-directional relationship between financial performance and the proportion of female directors sitting on the BoD.     

Board generational diversity in emerging markets

To identify the determinants of the generational diversity of board membership in emerging market firms, we conducted an empirical analysis using state-level social inequality indices and data on 14,598 listed/unlisted firms from 20 Eastern European countries and China. We found that, in these emerging markets, social inequality strongly inhibits the generational diversity of board membership, regardless of the gender of board members. The results also reveal that four firm attributes—board size, CEO duality, state ownership, and the presence of foreign investors from non-advanced economies as firm owners—significantly affect the age composition of board directors in line with our expectations. Two other firm attributes—ownership concentration and firm ownership by foreign investors from advanced economies—are also found to have a significant impact on board generational diversity; however, the direction of their impact contradicts our predictions. Supplementary estimations carried out by introducing various sample restrictions produce similar results, thus confirming the statistical robustness of our findings.     

How does CSR disclosure affect dividend payments in emerging markets?

This article examines the nexus between corporate social responsibility disclosures (CSRD) and dividend payout decisions in the context of emerging markets. Using hand-collected sample of listed firms from India, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Korea, Turkey, and Russia over the period 2010–2018, our results show that CSR disclosures exert a negative impact on corporate dividend payments. Further, this effect is more prevalent for firms having higher institutional ownership. However, the results remain unaffected by the differences in legal origin i.e. civil law or common law, of the sample countries. Further, our main results are supported by a number of sensitivity tests, including reduced sample size, alternative dividend payment measures, and estimation techniques.     

On the exposure of the BRIC countries to global economic shocks

The financial crisis led to a deep recession in many industrial countries. While large emerging countries recovered relatively quickly, their performance deteriorated in recent years, despite the modest recovery in advanced economies. The higher divergence of business cycles is closely linked to the Chinese economy. During the crisis, the Chinese fiscal stimulus prevented an abrupt decline in GDP growth not only in that country, but also in resource‐rich economies. Due to lower commodity demand, the environment became more challenging for many emerging markets in recent years. This view is supported by Bayesian structural VARs specified for the individual BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries. The results reveal a strong impact of the international economy on GDP growth. However, in contrast to the other countries, China plays a crucial role in determining global trade and oil prices. Therefore, the Chinese economy exerts significant spillovers to the other countries under analysis. The change in the Chinese growth strategy puts additional reform pressure especially in countries with abundant natural resources.     

Does Bank Diversification Improve Output Growth? Evidence from the Recent Global Crisis

This study examines whether the diversity of activities conducted by the banking sector in the years approaching the recent global financial crisis alleviated the adverse impact of the crisis. Using data for 28 industries in 66 countries, we find that bank diversification has strengthened country resilience to the crisis, as measured by industry growth over the period 2008–2009. However, we find that while both bank‐based and market‐based economies have been affected negatively by the crisis, the contribution of bank diversification in mitigating the real impact of the crisis is pronounced only in bank‐based economies. Overall, our findings suggest that countries with significant bank diversification have also been the most resilient to the recent global crisis.     

Board gender diversity and firm performance: The moderating role of firm size

This paper investigates the relationships among board gender diversity, firm performance, and firm size. Our paper provides new insights into the relationship between board gender diversity and firm performance by examining whether firm size alters the impact of board gender diversity on firm performance. We use a panel data from A-share-listed non-financial firms in China to examine the relationship during the period of 2007–2012. Our finding demonstrates that the gender diversity on the board has a positive impact on firm performance if and only if the value of firm size is less than some critical value. In addition, we also find that firm size may undermine the positive impact of board gender diversity on firm performance. This paper contributes to the literature by offering a contingency approach to examine the relationship between board gender diversity and firm performance as well as shedding light on the relationship in the context of a developing economy.     

OPTIMAL DIVIDEND POLICY WITH MEAN-REVERTING CASH RESERVOIR

Motivated by empirical evidence and economic arguments, we assume that the cash reservoir of a financial corporation follows a mean reverting process. The firm must decide the optimal dividend strategy, which consists of the optimal times and the optimal amounts to pay as dividends. We model this as a stochastic impulse control problem, and succeed in finding an analytical solution. We also find a formula for the expected time between dividend payments. A crucial and surprising economic result of our paper is that, as the dividend tax rate decreases, it is optimal for the shareholders to receive smaller but more frequent dividend payments. This results in a reduction of the probability of default of the firm.     

Immunity and infection: Emerging and developed market sovereign spreads over the Global Financial Crisis

We compare sovereign bond spreads during the international financial crisis across groups drawn from 43 countries, including 20 emerging economies. We extend traditional factor analyses and utilize propensity score matching to select a non-crisis sample for comparison with the crisis sample that is more robust to exogenous crisis dating. We find minimal changes over the crisis period in the average spreads of local-currency-denominated emerging market bonds. In contrast, the spreads of peripheral Eurozone sovereign bonds increased by large amounts and were subject to sovereign risk contagion.     

全球经济周期调整与中国对外开放政策

伴随金融危机,全球经济处于一个艰难的调整期。在这一时期中无论是发达经济体和新兴经济体经济都遭受巨大冲击,甚至不同程度陷入衰退;中国的经济也受到很大不利影响。为了应对金融危机,保持经济增长,中国应积极调整对外开放政策。     

Sovereign bond spreads determinants in Latin American countries: Before and during the XXI financial crisis

This paper aims to identify the main determinants of sovereign bond spreads in seven Latin American countries and verify the existence of contagion effect over these markets during the last financial crisis. We apply a panel data framework and find that the inflation, terms of trade ratio and the external debt and international reserves (both as percentage of GDP) are key drivers of sovereign bond spreads. Moreover, we test the crisis impact over emerging economies. Our results show that the crisis has a statistically significant impact on the EMBIG spreads since 2008.     

A Framework for Assessing Global Imbalances1

Since the mid‐1990s and prior to the financial crisis external balances of systemically important economies widened significantly. This paper takes a long‐run perspective and reviews the main determinants of widening global imbalances. To this aim, we first provide a set of newly derived statistical measures: while large external imbalances are not new in economic history, their persistence, their concentration on one economy (the United States) and the specific role of emerging market economies make the present episode rather unique. Second, we argue that the observed pattern of imbalances can be mostly understood as a result of various structural changes in the global economy, which have allowed a widening trend of external positions. Three main features set the most recent period apart from past episodes of growing external imbalances: (i) the emergence of new players, in particular emerging market economies such as China and India, which are quickly catching up with the advanced economies; (ii) an unprecedented wave of financial globalisation, with more integrated global financial markets and increasing opportunities for international portfolio diversification, also characterised by considerable asymmetries in the level of market completeness across countries; and (iii) the favourable global macroeconomic and financial environment, with record high global growth rates in recent years, low financial market volatility and easy global financing conditions over a long period of time, running until the outburst of the financial crisis during the summer of 2007. These structural changes that have been supplemented by cyclical or policy‐induced factors ultimately facilitated the sudden, disorderly unwinding of global imbalances that is reflected in the current financial crisis.     

Emerging Asia: Decoupling or Recoupling

In this paper, we investigate the degree of real economic interdependence between emerging East Asian and major industrial countries to shed light on the heated debate over the ‘decoupling’ of emerging East Asia. We first document the evolution of macroeconomic interdependence for emerging East Asian economies through changing trade and financial linkages at both the regional and global levels. Then, by employing a panel vector autoregression (VAR) model, we estimate the degree of real economic interdependence before and after the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis. Empirical findings show that real economic interdependence increased significantly in the post‐crisis period, suggesting ‘recoupling’, rather than decoupling, in recent years. Output shocks from major industrial countries have a significant positive effect on emerging East Asian economies. More interestingly, the reverse is also true. Output shocks from emerging East Asia (and China) have a significant positive effect on output in major industrial countries. The result suggests that macroeconomic interdependence between emerging East Asia and industrial countries have become ‘bi‐directional’, defying the traditional notion of the ‘North–South relationship’ as one of ‘uni‐directional’ dependence.     

Does Board Gender Diversity Have a Financial Impact? Evidence Using Stock Portfolio Performance

There is growing regulatory pressure on firms worldwide to address the under-representation of women in senior positions. Regulators have taken a variety of approaches to the issue. We investigate a jurisdiction that has issued recommendations and disclosure requirements, rather than implementing quotas. Much of the rhetoric surrounding gender diversity centres on whether diversity has a financial impact. In this paper we take an aggregate (market-level) approach and compare the performance of portfolios of firms with gender diverse boards to those without. We also investigate whether having multiple women on the board is linked to performance, and if there is a within-industry effect. Overall, we do not find evidence of an association between diversity and performance. We find some weak evidence of a negative correlation between having multiple women on the board and performance, but that in some industries diversity is positively correlated with performance.     

Women on board and performance of family firms: Evidence from India

This paper provides empirical evidence on the effect of woman directors on performance of family firms in the context of an emerging economy. Using data from India covering periods prior to and post institution of gender quotas, we find evidence that the presence of woman directors on board leads to higher firm performance. However, this positive effect is driven by independent woman directors. Further this effect gets attenuated when family members occupy key management positions in the firm. We conclude that governance structures of firms in emerging economies matter for the impact of woman directors on firm performance.     

Foreign institutional investors and dividend policy: Evidence from China

This study examines whether foreign institutional investment influences firms’ dividend policies. Using data from all domestically listed nonfinancial firms in China during the period of 2003–2013, we find that foreign shareholding influences dividend decisions and vice versa.Furthermore, changes in dividend payments over time positively affect subsequent changes in foreign shareholding, but the opposite is not true. Our study indicates that foreign institutional investors do not change firms’ future dividend payments once they have made their investment choices in China. Moreover, they self-select into Chinese firms that pay high dividends. Our evidence suggests that in an institutional setting where foreign investors have tightly restricted access to local securities markets and a relatively high risk of expropriation by controlling shareholders exists, firms can use dividends to signal good investment opportunities to foreign investors.     

Market Risk Disclosures and Board Gender Diversity in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Firms

We investigate the impact of board gender diversity on corporate risk reporting for Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) financial firms. Recent developments and improvements of corporate governance in the GCC markets suggest that firms in the GCC have become more transparent with less information asymmetry. However, we find that the presence of female directors in the boards of financial institutions suppresses the positive association between corporate governance and market risk disclosures for the period between 2007 and 2011. These findings suggest that culture and conservatism nature of GCC societies persist in the GCC business environment. Our results are robust to alternative specifications and endogeneity tests.     

Bank competition in Russia: An examination at different levels of aggregation

We analyze bank competition in Russia at different levels of aggregation. First, we compute a country-level measure of competition and compare it to that for similar-sized economies. Second, we contrast competition across different groups of banks in Russia. Third, we analyze bank competition across Russian regions. We find that banks in Russia are less competitive than those in Brazil, but more so than those in China and India. Large and state-owned banks exert more market power than others. Finally, competition is stronger in regions where there is less bank concentration, greater presence of banks, and greater financial and/or economic development.     

Gender Diversity in the Boardroom and Firm Financial Performance

The monitoring role performed by the board of directors is an important corporate governance control mechanism, especially in countries where external mechanisms are less well developed. The gender composition of the board can affect the quality of this monitoring role and thus the financial performance of the firm. This is part of the “business case” for female participation on boards, though arguments may also be framed in terms of ethical considerations. While the issue of board gender diversity has attracted growing research interest in recent years, most empirical results are based on U.S. data. This article adds to a growing number of non-U.S. studies by investigating the link between the gender diversity of the board and firm financial performance in Spain, a country which historically has had minimal female participation in the workforce, but which has now introduced legislation to improve equality of opportunities. We investigate the topic using panel data analysis and find that gender diversity – as measured by the percentage of women on the board and by the Blau and Shannon indices – has a positive effect on firm value and that the opposite causal relationship is not significant. Our study suggests that investors in Spain do not penalise firms which increase their female board membership and that greater gender diversity may generate economic gains.     

Firm performance and boardroom gender diversity: A quantile regression approach

We investigate the relation between firm performance and boardroom gender diversity using quantile regression methods. Using annual data on over 3000 US firms from 2007 to 2014, we show that the presence of women on the board has a positive effect on firm performance, and this effect varies at different parts of the performance distribution. Critically, we demonstrate that the presence of women directors alters the dispersion of firm performance. Our quantile regression results suggest that female directors have a significantly larger positive impact in high-performing firms relative to low-performing firms. The board gender diversity effect is not homogeneous as assumed in previous research. In addition, we account for the endogenous selection of women to the board. Using instrumental variable quantile regression, we find that in general there is a positive correlation between firm performance and board gender diversity. Overall, we suggest that boardroom gender diversity has an effect on both the conditional mean and the dispersion of firm performance, and quantile regression adds value to the empirical examination of the performance impact of board gender diversity.