Alexander and Cohen (1999) examine the relation between ownership structure and corporate crime. Using American data on listed firms that were convicted of Federal crimes for 1984–1990, they analysed a sample of 78 ‘criminal’ (convicted of a Federal crime) firms and 78 ‘non-criminal’ (matching control) firms. The main findings are that firms in which top management has a larger fraction of outstanding shares experience corporate crime less frequently, particularly among firms in which management’s ownership stake is relatively low (e.g., less than 10%). They, therefore, conclude that penalising shareholders’ equity for corporate crime has had a deterrent effect.
Using Australian data with a matched sample of 31 fraud firms and 31 no-fraud firms from 1988–2000, Sharma (2004) examines the effect of a set of governance mechanisms, including the proportion of independent directors on the BOD, the chair/CEO duality, the percentage of institutional shareholdings, audit quality and the percentage of management shareholdings, on the likelihood of corporate fraud. The main findings are that as the proportion of independent directors and the percentage of independent institutional ownership increase, the likelihood of fraud decreases. The results also show a positive relation between the chair/CEO duality and the likelihood of fraud, while audit quality and management shareholdings have no significant effects.
Corporate Governance Research in China
While there have been studies that examine the relationship between corporate governance features and corporate performance among the Chinese firms, to our best knowledge there has been no study that examines the relation between corporate governance and fraud in these firms. However, a review of the studies investigating corporate governance and performance of Chinese firms may still be useful in understanding the corporate governance issues in China.
Xu and Wang (1999) examine whether the unique ownership structure of listed firms affects their performance within the framework of corporate governance. Their analysis shows that the composition and concentration of share ownership do in fact significantly affect corporate performance. Firstly, there is a positive and significant correlation between ownership concentration and profitability. Secondly, company profitability is positively correlated with the fraction of legal person shares, but it is either negatively correlated or uncorrelated with the fractions of state shares and tradable shares that are held by individual investors. Thirdly, labour productivity tends to decline as the proportion of state shares increases. Chen (2001) examines the cross-sectional relation between ownership structure and performance of manufacturing firms and the findings are similar to Xu and Wang’s (1999). Chen’s (2001) results show that there is a strong relation between ownership concentration and performance, and domestic institutional and managerial shareholdings improve firms’ performance while state shares play a negative role in corporate governance. These results suggest the importance of large institutional shareholders in corporate governance, the inefficiency of state ownership, and potential problems in an overly dispersed ownership structure.
Wang et al. (2001) performed a compelling statistical analysis of listed firms from 1990 to 2000 and found that the financial performance of these firms deteriorated after listing. However, the authors did find that performance is positively correlated with a more balanced ownership structure among top shareholders, suggesting that less concentration of power in a single shareholder’s hands leads to better performance. Their findings on ownership concentration are not consistent with those of Xu and Wang (1999) and Chen (2001)
Tian and Lau (2001) studied the effect of the BOD composition and leadership structure (i.e., the chair/CEO duality) on performance under the two competing theories of corporate governance: agency theory and stewardship theory. They classify outside directors into affiliated directors (representing the parent, usually an SOE, of listed firms) and independent directors, and classify the latter further into directors representing state shares, directors representing legal person shares, and directors who are academic researchers or independent professionals.6 Their results show that the better-performing companies tend to have a CEO-chairman leader and more affiliated directors. Other types of directors (based on their classification, “independent directors”) do not have any systematic effect. Tian and Lau (2001) conclude that the findings are consistent with stewardship theory. 公司治理与企业舞弊英文文献和翻译(5):http://www.youerw.com/fanyi/lunwen_245.html