Shareholdings of Board Members and Corporate Performance: A Panel Quantile Regression Analysis

This paper investigates the impact of board member shareholdings on corporate performance in China and Taiwan, and employs unbalanced panel data over the period 2005–2009. In view of the inconsistent empirical findings in the literature and the limitations of least squares regressions, this study adopts a quantile regression method including fixed effects (FE) models. An important finding is that a significant, positive relationship exists between the shareholdings of board members and accounting measures of performance, and this relationship only exists for the more profitable firms in China, while a uniformly significant and positive relationship exists across all quantiles between the shareholdings of board members and accounting measures of performance in Taiwan. These findings, which cannot be obtained using a FE model, suggest that board members can influence firm performance through holding shares in most Taiwan firms and profitable Chinese firms.