法治发展、法律独董与诉讼风险

Development of Law System, Legal Background Independent Directors and Litigation Risk

本文以法律独董为研究对象,克服现有独立董事研究的固有缺陷,构建法律独董——公司配对数据,采用时间个体固定效应模型,研究了法律独董是否会对公司诉讼风险产生影响。研究发现,上市公司诉讼风险中存在法律独董效应;法律独董有助于降低公司的诉讼风险。进一步研究发现,法律独董主要在担保、侵权、买卖合同以及债务纠纷合同中具有显著控制作用;在对我国法治发展环境进行时空区分后发现,在法治环境好的地区和《民事诉讼法》修订后,法律独董降低公司诉讼风险效应更显著。本文研究对于在加强资本市场法治建设中如何完善独立董事制度和降低上市公司诉讼风险具有一定的启示。

This paper studies whether the legal background independent directors will have an impact on the corporate litigation risk. By constructing the legal background independent director-firm matching data, this paper adopts the time-individual fixed effects model to overcome the inherent defects of the existing independent director research. We find that the legal background independent directors’ effects exist on the corporate litigation risk and legal background independent directors attenuate corporate litigation risk. Further research provides evidence that the effect of legal background independent directors on litigation risk is mainly found among guarantee dispute, infringement disputes, sales contract dispute and debt disputes. After distinguishing the law environment and the development of legal system, these results are more pronounced when firms located in the areas with better law environment and after the revision of Civil Procedure Act. This paper has certain contribution to improving the independent director system and reduce the corporate litigation risk in promoting the legal construction of capital market.