Does corporate governance influence firm performance? Quantile regression evidence from a transactional economy

ABSTRACT

This study examines the impact of corporate governance structures on firm performance using a unique sample of 478 non-financial companies listed on the two main Vietnamese stock exchanges. Given the contrasting existing empirical results, we adopt the method of quantile regression (QR) and report some robust and significant negative relationship between board independence/Chief Executive Officer duality and firm performance. These findings seem rather corroborate the agency theory. Furthermore, the use of QR may be more insightful than estimating the mean effect of the response variable.

KEYWORDS:

• Quantile regression
• corporate governance
• transactional economy
• firm performance

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• C21
• G34
• G32

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Consistent with Boone et al. (2007), we defined an independent director as a director who neither works for the firm nor has extensive dealings with the company.

² We only considered coefficients that reached conventional significance levels of 1% and 5%.