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Purpose This study aims to examine the determinants of the female representations on Chinese listed firm’s boards. This study also investigates the effect of gender diversity on corporate social responsibility activities. Design/methodology/approach The Tobit regression model is used because the data is censored and using ordinary least square regression can give spurious results. For robust check, the authors also used Heckman’s (1979) two-stage self-selection model to remove the sample self-selection bias. Findings The authors find that the female representations on the corporate board are positively associated with firm age, firm performance, corporate governance, family ownership, institutional ownership and managerial ownership while negatively related to firm size and state ownership. This study also incorporates predictors of the critical mass of women on the Chinese listed firm’s board. The study also tests the female-led hypothesis and concludes that the female representation increases in firms with female chief executive officer (CEO) or female chairpersons. The Chinese listed firms with gender-diverse board are socially responsible. Research limitations/implications The importance of diversity in corporate boards has been demonstrated in light of the agency theory and the resource dependence framework. The results contribute to the previous literature by documenting the determinants of female representations on board, robust by alternative measures of gender diversity, firm size, corporate governance and estimation techniques. Practical implications The economic significance of gender diversity stirred the firms to increase female representation. The policymakers can understand the reasons for female underrepresentation in Chinese boards and can reform the regulation to enhance governance quality, non-state ownership and risk aversion among the listed firms. Originality/value This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the key predictor of the world’s largest emerging economy, specifically the study focuses on the firm specific determinants, different governance attributes, ownership structure and firm risk measures. This study also seeks to answer if the presence of a female in the Chairperson or CEO position encourages the firms to hire more female directors or not?

Previous studies have recognized that the presence of academic directors on the board leads to better corporate governance and accounting quality. However, studies have yet to establish the effectiveness of academic directors in mitigating corporate expropriation in emerging markets. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of academic directors on corporate expropriation in Chinese listed firms. It is observed that the presence of the academic director in the board mitigates earnings management and abnormal investments and enhances the dividend payments. Additionally, we find that the critical mass of academic directors curbs the expropriator managerial behavior in Chinese listed firms.

This study examines the effect of independent directors on carbon information disclosure (CID) in China from 2011 to 2017. Additionally, this study investigates the effect of independent director’s attributes (gender, academic experience, and political connection) on the CID. To test our hypothesis, we collected data of 511 Chinese listed firms. The empirical results show that independent directors have a positive influence on the CID. Moreover, the independent female directors, independent academic directors and independent politically connected directors also enhances the CID. Our findings offer shareholders, regulators, and other stakeholders an integrating perspective on motivating firms to disclose high quality carbon information.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the value relevance of Research and development (R&D) and free cash flow (FCF) in an efficient investment setup. Most importantly, this paper examines whether the value relevance of R&D and FCF is associated with life cycle stages. Furthermore, this paper reports whether the market response to R&D and FCF is different in competitive market as compared to the concentrated market. Design/methodology/approach The analysis is based on the Ohlson (1995) model for the determination of value relevance of earnings and book value. Capitalized R&D and FCF data comprising of the Chinese A-listed firms from the year 2008 to 2016 are selected for this study. Following Anthony and Ramesh (1992), the authors divided the firm life cycle into different stages. HHI index is used to measure the product market competition. Findings The main result shows that R&D and FCF are value relevant in Chinese A-listed firms. The impact of R&D and FCF on the value relevance of earnings and book value is also positive and significant. The findings of the effect of R&D and FCF on the value relevance of accounting information signify that the information content (R2=0.46) of the mature stage is higher than that of the growth and stagnant stage. The explanatory power measured by R2 value for competitive industries (0.47) is much higher than the concentrated industries (0.33). Research limitations/implications Despite taking into account all the possible available variables, there are few limitations of the study. This study only studies the effect of EPS, BPS, R&D and FCF on the value relevance of accounting information. Other determinant such as size, growth, leverage and firm age is ignored. Since the R&D expenditure is discretionary, therefore the findings cannot be generalized to all the sectors. A sector wise comparative study can be done in future, to understand the differences in the information contents of R&D and FCF. Also, the tax effect of R&D is ignored in this study. For future call, the value relevance of tax effect on R&D can be explored. Practical implications The investors can now determine the present value of all the future cash flows of investing activities. The results of the study are significant for the Chinese investors who should incorporate the R&D and FCF along with investment efficiency. The investors should keep in mind the life cycle stage while investing in a certain stock. The competitive markets have more information content than the concentrated markets. The corporate managers can benefit from this study while issuing new shares. The market responds positively to the stock having investment efficient R&D and FCF investment. For the policy implication perspective, the security market regulator should devise the effective pro-effective product market regulations. Originality/value The contribution of this study is manifold. First, according to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that incorporates investment efficiency with R&D and FCF and explores its effect on the value relevance of accounting information. Second, the impact of R&D on the value relevance is studied by numerous researchers (Lev and Sougiannis, 1996; Han and Manry, 2004). Similarly, FCF-agency cost effect has also been investigated by (Rahman and Mohd-Saleh, 2008; Chen et al., 2012) but the value relevance of R&D and FCF during different life cycle stages still needs to be answered. Finally, this study also tries to answers the question if the market response to R&D and FCF is different in a competitive market as compared to the concentrated market.