The Changing Dynamics of Board Independence: A Copula Based Quantile Regression Approach

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of board characteristics, especially board independence, on firm performance from a dynamic perspective through copula-based quantile regression approaches, which allow us to focus on changes at different points in the distribution of board characteristics. We find that the effect of board independence on Tobin’s Q, a proxy of firm value, is negatively associated with firm value, using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. This negative effect using the conditional mean of the firm value does not hold across the conditional quantiles of the distribution of Tobin’s Q, and this finding is still held under both the linear and the nonlinear quantile regressions. We even lessen the assumption of distributions of multivariate board variables by employing parametric copula-based quantile regressions as well as nonparametric ones. The results support our findings. Our results suggest that estimating the quantile effect of board variables on firm value can provide more meaningful insight than just examining the conditional mean effect.