Female Directors And Corporate Innovation

Following the framework of Chen,Leung and Evans(2018),this paper uses the companies listed in China’s A-share market as research samples,and study the relationship between female directors and corporate innovation.First,based on panel data multiple regression analysis,this paper empirically tests the relationship between female directors and corporate innovation after controlling a series of company characteristics and time and industry fixed effects.Second,in order to alleviate the endogenous problem,this article uses the propensity score matching method and instrumental variable method to further identify the causal relationship.Third,this paper explores the underlying mechanism between female directors and corporate innovation from the perspective of female directors’ characteristics for the first time.As far as I know,there is no research at home and abroad empirically testing the influence of female directors on company innovation from the perspective of the characteristics of female directors.The empirical results show:(1)There is a significant negative correlation between female directors and the company’s innovation input and output,which is consistent with the upper echelon theory;However,I fail to find any significant correlation between female director and the innovation quality,which is consistent with the symbolism theory.Economically,with 10% increase in proportion of female directors,the company’s research and development expenditure decreased by about 1.9%,and the number of patents decreased by about 4.3%(among which,the number of invention patents decreased by about 6.3%,utility patents decreased by about 4.7%,and design patents increased by about 2.2%).(2)This conclusion is different from that of Chen et al.(2018),who used a sample of US listed companies to find a significant positive correlation between female directors and corporate innovation.(3)This conclusion is not completely consistent with the existing domestic research: the results of this article show that the relationship between female directors and different types of innovation measurement variables(R&D expenditure,number of patents,patent citations)is not uniform;However,Li et al.(2019)only used R&D expenditure as a measure of corporate innovation,while Ye et al.(2016)and Chen(2017)only used the number of patents as a measure of corporate innovation and found that female directors and company innovation were significantly negatively correlated relationship;Li et al.(2016)used R&D expenditure as a measure of corporate innovation and found that there was no significant correlation between female directors and corporate innovation.(4)The negative relation between female directors and the company’s innovation input and output is stronger when product market competition is higher,corporate leverage is higher and in private enterprises,which implies the risk aversion characteristics of female directors can explain the relationship between female directors and corporate innovation.(5)This article did not find that the supervisory characteristics,demographic characteristics,social relationship characteristics,and low over-confidence levels of female directors could explain the relationship between female directors and corporate innovation.The education,overseas background,financial background,tenure and business of female independent directors,female chairmen,and female directors have no significant relationship with the company’s innovation.