This paper examines the relationship between board characteristics and earnings management. Management of a firm may engage in earnings management for his own benefit. However, under proper corporate governance mechanism, the board of directors might be able to monitor the firm and prevent the management from engaging in earnings management. We find that when the board size is large, the higher the extent of earnings management. However, when there are more outside directors in the board, the extent of earnings management is lower. The effects of board characteristics on earnings management are significant only for group affiliation firms or non-electronic firms.

This paper tests the relationship between ownership/leadership structures and stock returns for firms listed in Taiwan. A "Governance Index" is built based on four different aspects of the company's governance structure: 1. CEO duality, 2. Size of the board of directors, 3. Managements' holdings and 4. Block shareholders' holding. This index is used as a proxy measure of the effectiveness of the corporate governance mechanism. We propose that firms under good governance should outperform those under poor governance. We find a striking relationship between our governance index and stock performance of firms. The results imply that our corporate governance index is successful in evaluating the effectiveness of the governance mechanism of firms in Taiwan. Copyright (c) 2007 The Authors; Journal compilation (c) 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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This study considers an important aspect of corporate governance: the relationship between cash flow rights and dividend payout policy of listed family firms in Taiwan, an economy characterized by a predominance of family-controlled firms. Dividend payout levels are important because they are crucial to governing the firm and managing its investments. The empirical results show that at a low level of controlling families' cash flow rights, the threat to lose control at any time makes controlling families claim more in dividends. This yields a positive relationship between dividend payout and the cash flow rights of controlling families at this level. Meanwhile, at a moderate level of controlling families' cash flow rights, the entrenchment effect becomes more robust and creates a negative relationship with dividend payout. Finally, at the very highest level of controlling families' cash flow rights, excessive firm-specific risk again helps to again create a positive relationship. This nonmonotonic relationship between controlling family cash flow rights and dividend payout also holds for financially mature firms that have a high earned to contributed capital mix.

Polyamide 6/boron nitride (PA6/BN) composites were synthesized via anionic ring‐opening polymerization using ε‐caprolactam as the monomer and functional boron nitride (f‐BN) as the thermal conductive filler. Besides the homopolymerized PA6, some PA6 molecule chains would grow from the f‐BN sheets through the “grafting from” strategy. Compared with unfunctional hexagonal BN (h‐BN), the introduction of f‐BN not only improved the dispersion of f‐BN in the matrix but also enhanced the interface bonding between f‐BN and PA6. The homogeneous dispersion of f‐BN in the PA6/f‐BN composite favored the formation of the continuous thermal conductive paths or network at a low f‐BN loading, and the good interface bonding reduced the phonon scattering in the interface, which improved the thermal conductivity (TC) of the PA6/f‐BN composite by 66.0% compared with that of the pure PA6, when only 5 wt% f‐BN was added. In contrast, with the same content of unfunctional h‐BN loading, the TC of the corresponding composite merely improved by 29.7%. Moreover, Young's modulus and yield strength of PA6/f‐BN composites had increased obviously with the introduction of f‐BN, whereas those of PA6/h‐BN composites showed small fluctuation with the same contents of BN. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 60:710–716, 2020. © 2020 Society of Plastics Engineers