We formulate theory on the effect of board of director gender diversity on the broad spectrum of securities fraud and generate three main insights. First, based on ethicality, risk aversion, and diversity, we hypothesize that gender diversity on boards can operate as a significant moderator for the frequency of fraud. Second, we hypothesize that the stock market response to fraud from a more gender-diverse board is significantly less pronounced. Third, we hypothesize that women are more effective in maledominated industries in reducing both the frequency and severity of fraud. Our first-ever empirical tests, based on data from a large sample of Chinese firms that committed securities fraud, are largely consistent with each of these hypotheses. ABSTRACTWe formulate theory on the effect of board of director gender diversity on the broad spectrum of securities fraud and generate three main insights. First, based on ethicality, risk aversion, and diversity, we hypothesize that gender diversity on boards can operate as a significant moderator for the frequency of fraud. Second, we hypothesize that the stock market response to fraud from a more gender-diverse board is significantly less pronounced. Third, we hypothesize that women are more effective in male-dominated industries in reducing both the frequency and severity of fraud.Our first-ever empirical tests, based on data from a large sample of Chinese firms that committed securities fraud, are largely consistent with each of these hypotheses.

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Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre -including this research content -immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.