Local tax rebates,corporate tax burdens,and firm migration: Evidence from China

Conflicts of interest between local governments and the central administration in China have yielded many local policies that only serve the interests of local governments. The policy of first levying and then rebating taxes is an example of how local governments eschew the national tax regulations to boost local economies rather than national interests. In 2001, the Chinese government announced the termination of local tax rebates, which had some expected outcomes. We find that local governments complied with the new tax policy even though it no longer allowed local governments to grant tax incentives. However, some companies found ways to avoid the greater tax burdens by moving their business registration locations to tax havens. We also find that firms controlled by local governments were less likely to change registration locations. Our study examines the national tax regulation in China and explores how tax rules influence company decisions. In addition, we show that non-tax incentives, such as local economic development, may also influence company decisions.     

Political connections and privatization: Evidence from China

We examine how the political connections of acquirers influence the process and outcomes of privatization in China. We find that politically connected acquirers receive preferential treatment and acquire higher quality firms during full privatization, and document evidence of post-privatization tunneling from target firms to acquirers. We show that the excessive tunneling by politically connected acquirers is associated with lower performance after privatization. Overall, our results suggest that individuals are likely to abuse their political connections to exploit the opportunities arising from privatization. We recommend that policymakers constrain the influence of political connections in the privatization process.     

Rookie directors and firm performance: Evidence from China

This paper examines the benefits and costs associated with rookie independent directors (RIDs) in Chinese public companies from 2008 to 2014. We find that RIDs attend more board meetings. Boards with more RIDs tunnel less to controlling shareholders, suggesting that RIDs are efficient monitors. However, in state-owned firms, the presence of RIDs is negatively associated with investment efficiency, suggesting a potential cost of appointing RIDs. Overall, firms with more RIDs have higher operating performance, especially when tunneling is a more common issue, when board experience is less important and when monitoring costs are relatively low.     

Mutual funds’ ownership and firm performance: Evidence from China

Mutual funds have emerged and rapidly developed since 2000 in China. This study tests empirically the impact of mutual funds’ ownership on firm performance in China, using a large sample for the period of 2001–2005. We find that equity ownership by mutual funds has a positive effect on firm performance. The result is robust to several measures of firm performance and various estimations. Our finding supports recent regulatory efforts in China to promote mutual funds as a corporate governance mechanism and suggests that pooling diffuse minority interests of individual shareholders who are prone to free-rider problems via mutual funds is beneficial.     

Security regulations,access to capital markets,and firm performance: Evidence from China

This study explores the cost of security regulations in China, where firms are required to meet a certain profitability benchmark before applying for permission to raise more equity via secondary equity offerings (SEOs). Using a difference-in-differences setting, we show that firms affected by the regulation (i.e., firms with high external financing demands (EFD) but profitability lower than the regulatory requirement) significantly underperform their counterparts, while unaffected firms do not. The affected firms’ performance decline increases (decreases) when the requirement of profitability is more (less) restricted. Consistently, the three-day cumulative abnormal return (CAR) of firms with high EFD is significantly negative (positive) when the regulation is tightened (loosened). Our study provides evidence on how the cost of regulation affects companies that have growth opportunities.     

Confucianism,successor choice,and firm performance in family firms: Evidence from China

This study examines the nexus between Confucianism, the choice of the leadership successor, and firm performance in family firms in China. It provides original evidence that firm founders who are deeply influenced by Confucianism have a higher likelihood of choosing a family member or a guanxi-connected nonfamily member as the successor. Moreover, family/guanxi-connected successors have a positive effect on firm performance compared with their counterparts outside of the family/guanxi circle. One underlying reason is that, affected by Confucianism, only the family/guanxi-connected successors can acquire the founder's specialized assets via pre-succession internal managerial experience, which, in turn, enables them to outperform other successors.     

Earnings,institutional investors,tax avoidance,and firm value: Evidence from Taiwan

This study examines the valuation of earnings from China and Taiwan by foreign and domestic institutional investors across a sample of Taiwanese electronics firms. We further compare the valuation of firm earnings reported in tax havens and non-tax havens, and whether these firms have changed tax avoidance activities since 2004 when the Taiwanese government enacted stricter auditing of transfer pricing regulation.Our findings show that both operating income from the home country and investment income are positively associated with firm value. Operating income from China, however, is not significantly related to firm value when institutional ownership of the firm exceeds fifty percent. This result indicates that operating income is valued differently, depending on the location from which the income was generated. Non-operating income enhances firm value regardless of the revenue source. We also report that foreign institutional investors favor operating income from domestic and investment sources over earnings generated from non-domestic sources and other non-operating income. Furthermore, our results suggest that firms rearrange reported profits from subsidiaries located in tax havens to affiliates in other countries following the transfer pricing audit guide Taiwan implemented in 2004. Results also indicate firms may have been shifting profits to other low-tax-rate countries, or to countries which do not require firms to pay taxes, even if they are not doing business in that country.     

The effect of corporate culture on firm performance: Evidence from China

This study examines whether corporate culture promotion affects firm performance in China in terms of firm market value, firm financial performance and innovation output. We find consistent evidence that corporate culture promotion is negatively related to firm market value, positively related to innovation output and not significantly related to firm financial performance. In addition, the negative effect of corporate culture promotion on firm market value is driven by small firms and firms located in less developed provinces. Furthermore, we find that some specific corporate culture promotions, such as innovation culture promotion and integrity culture promotion, are not related to firm value or financial performance. However, innovation culture promotion is positively associated with innovation output.     

Partisan political connections,ethnic tribalism,and firm performance

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - This paper investigates the impact of partisan political connections and ethnic tribalism on firm performance in a hyper-partisan political...     

Corporate governance,capital structure and firm performance: Evidence from Thailand

We examine the relationship between corporate governance and firm performance for a panel sample of 493 firms of non-financial firms in Thailand during the period 2001–2014. We find that for the full sample, corporate governance is not associated with financial leverage and firm performance. Leverage has a positive effect on firm performance. When we split firms into small and large firm subsamples, we observe some influence of corporate governance. The negative effect of audit committee size on firm performance is evident for large firms while the effect of audit reputation on firm performance is evident for small firms only. Furthermore, financial leverage mediates the effect of audit committee size on firm performance for the large firms.     

Controlling shareholders,board structure,and firm performance: Evidence from India

We examine the prevalence and performance impact of controlling shareholders and study corporate board structures and ownership structures in 1796 Indian firms. Families (founders) are present on the boards in 63.2 (65.5) percent of the sample firms. On average, founders own over 50% of outstanding shares. In contrast to the findings of Anderson and Reeb (2003) in the U.S. context, we find that controlling shareholder board membership in Indian firms has a statistically significant negative association with Tobin's Q. Higher proportion of independent directors, higher institutional ownership or larger firm size does not appear to mitigate this relationship. Overall, board membership of controlling shareholders appears to be costly for minority shareholders.     

Political connections,environmental violations and punishment: Evidence from heavily polluting firms

Using hand-collected data on violations of environmental regulations by heavily polluting firms in China, we examine the relationship between political connections and the probability of punishment for breach of such regulations. To this end, we exploit a regulatory reform, the enactment of Rule 18, a key component of China's anti-corruption campaign, which required politically connected independent directors to resign from their positions. Using difference-in-differences specifications, we find that firms from which politically connected directors resigned due to Rule 18 experience a significant increase in both the likelihood of ever being punished for environment-related violations and the frequency of punishment. The effect of Rule 18 is more pronounced among firms located in regions with less efficient judicial systems and higher levels of corruption, as well as firms that are not state-owned. Our evidence indicates that in the absence of effective regulation, political connections can be costly to the environment as they strongly affect the enforcement of environmental regulations.     

Political costs and corporate tax avoidance: Evidence from sin firms

The products and services of firms operating in sin industries (alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and firearms) run contrary to social norms and can produce significant negative externalities for society. As such, we expect that sin firms are at greater risk of incurring political costs in the form of additional regulation, higher excise taxes, or capital market intervention if they come under scrutiny for their income tax avoidance practices. Because of the nature of their products, regulators and policymakers are likely to face less pushback on new regulations or taxes on these firms. Sin firms start with a lower ability to influence the political process than firms in non-sin industries. Consequently, we hypothesize and find that sin firms exhibit less tax avoidance than non-sin firms, particularly through uncertain and more risky tax avoidance strategies. The negative relationship between the status of sin firms and tax avoidance is less pronounced in firms that accumulate political capital via intensive lobbying activities. Exploiting changes in partisan control of the Congress and White House, difference-in-differences tests show that firearm firms engage in less (more) tax avoidance when the Democrats (Republican) control both the Congress and White House. Overall, we conclude that political costs play an important role in corporate tax avoidance decisions.     

Managerial ownership and firm performance: Evidence from China's privatizations

We examine the relationship between managerial ownership and firm performance for a sample of Chinese State-owned enterprises (SOEs) privatized over the period 1992-2000. The results indicate that managerial ownership has a positive effect on firm performance. Although return on assets (ROA) and return on sales (ROS) decline post-privatization, firms with high managerial ownership and, specially, high CEO ownership, exhibit a smaller performance decline. The difference is highly significant, with or without controlling for residual state ownership and changes in the firm's operating environment. We also find that the influence on firm performance becomes less significant at higher levels of CEO ownership. In contrast, performance continues to increase with managerial ownership. This finding suggests that, beyond a certain point, the distribution of shares would be more effective if extended to the whole management team instead of being limited to the chief executive.     

Capital investment,internationalization, and firm performance: Evidence from Southeast Asian countries

This study asks whether firms that invest more have higher degrees of internationalization and whether firms with higher degrees of internationalization perform better than those with lower degrees of internationalization. Using a large panel sample that consists of non-financial firms in five countries in the Southeast Asia region during the period 1990–2014, I show that capital investment negatively affects the level of internationalization but has a positive effect on foreign sales growth. The negative effect of capital investment on internationalization levels is weaker for firms with higher degrees of internationalization. The level of internationalization is not associated with firm performance, measured as return on assets; however, there is some evidence for the positive relation between the level of internationalization and firm performance, measured as the stock return.     

Mutual funds,tunneling and firm performance: evidence from China

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - In contrast to US companies, Chinese firms have concentrated ownership with the effect that the central agency problem emanates from controlling...     

Board hierarchy,independent directors,and firm value: Evidence from China

While US companies mainly list their board of directors alphabetically, this is not the case for Chinese companies, most of which list their independent directors last. We interpret the listing order of Chinese directors as board hierarchy, reflecting power allocation within the board. Based on extant evidence that independent directors contribute to firm value and that empowered individuals have more influence in group decision making, we expect independent-director rankings to be positively associated with firm value and find evidence consistent with this prediction. In our supplementary analyses we explore the mechanisms through which empowered independent directors enhance firm value. We find that independent directors who are ranked higher are more likely to vote against the management, especially on financial reporting issues. Further, higher independent-director rankings are associated with less earnings management. Our study suggests that empowering independent directors increases firm value.     

Political connection,CEO gender,and firm performance

The political connection of a CEO is a determinant of firm performance. Shocks to the CEO's political connection can create fluctuations in firm performance. However, the underlying economic mechanisms between the CEO gender gaps in firm performance and CEO's political connections are not well understood. Using the political leadership transition in 2012 in China as an exogenous shock, we find that the CEO gender gap in firm performance is diminished in response to the more destruction of female CEOs' political connections. We control the firm characteristics by the propensity score matching method, suggesting the change of the political connection is the main reason for the narrowing of the CEO gender gap in firm performance.     

Knowledge-seeking and firm international performance: Evidence from Chinese multinational enterprises

This study focuses on whether the outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) of Chinese multinational enterprises (MEs) can improve firm international performance by seeking and transferring knowledge from developed markets (DMs). To control for the endogeneity and self-selection problem when deciding whether overseas investment should be accepted, propensity score matching (PSM) and difference-in-difference (DID) methods are combined to test the hypothesis. Samples of Chinese A-share listed firms over the period 2003–2018 are used to test the effects of knowledge seeking on firms' international performance. The empirical results indicate that Chinese EMs' OFDI in DMs can indeed improve their competitiveness in the world market through a combination of reverse spillovers and knowledge transfer.     

Family succession and firm performance: Evidence from Italian family firms

This article contributes to the growing empirical literature on family firms by studying the impact of the founder–chief executive officer (CEO) succession in a sample of Italian firms. We contrast firms that continue to be managed within the family by the heirs to the founders with firms in which the management is passed on to outsiders. Family successions, that is, successions by the founder's heirs, are further analyzed by assessing the impact of the sectoral intensity of competition on the post-succession performance. This analysis also addresses the endogeneity in the timing of the CEO succession by controlling for a pure mean-reversion effect in the firm's performance. We find that the maintenance of management within the family has a negative impact on the firm's performance, and this effect is largely borne by the good performers, especially in the more competitive sectors. These results indicate that there is no inherent superiority of the family-firm structure and emphasize the importance of conducting an analysis of governance in a variety of institutional settings.