Appointment of Political Top Executives and Subsequent Performance and Corporate Governance: Evidence from China's Listed SOEs

Abstract

This paper investigates the replacement and appointment of top executives in a business highly involved by the government and their consequences on firm performance and corporate governance. It provides a dynamic setting to test the value of political connection as prior studies do not discern government interests and incorporate ambiguous institutions and self-selection problems by cross-section test. Using data of China's listed state-owned enterprises (SOEs), this paper finds that the state owner is more likely to replace top executives and appoint a politically-connected executive when SOEs encounter economic distress such as poor ROA, earnings loss, high financial risk, or political distress such as SEC regulation violation. It implies that the politically-connected executive may be considered helpful by the government in response to firm distress. Further, it is found that the political top executives improve firm performance following their appointments and reduce the frequency of executives' illegal actions, by initiating modification of internal governance structures and mitigating manager's discretion. And those firms do not have preferential access to resources or government assistances such as fiscal subsidies, tax benefits, or the credit market. All these findings support that political executives could serve as a disciplinary or monitoring mechanism in a political economy lack of external market for corporate control and legal protection for investors, instead of being only a form of bail-out. Their efficacy is based on their administrative power, regulatory expertise and accountability to the government interests. These results provide better understanding of government interests and their impact on corporate governance.

Keywords: Appointment of top executives, Politically-connected executives, Firm performance, Corporate governance

JEL Classification: G30