The Impact of Board Characteristics on R&D Intensity: The Case of Chinese Machinery Industry

With the acceleration of technology development, enterprises must increase R&D investment to obtain competitive advantage. Well-designed corporate governance structure can reduce the agency cost, and may solve the problem of insufficient R&D investment. Taking 182 A-share listed companies in Chinese machinery industry as sample, this paper investigates the impact of board characteristics on firms' R&D intensity. The results show that the CEO and board chair duality, the size of the board of directors, and the number of board meetings have no significant impacts on R&D intensity, while the proportion of independent directors and the shareholding proportion of the board of directors have significant positive impacts on R&D intensity.