The Effect of Foreign Institutional Ownership on Corporate Tax Avoidance: International Evidence

We find robust evidence that foreign institutional investors are negatively associated with their investee firms’ tax avoidance. To mitigate endogeneity concerns, we apply three identification strategies. First, we implement a two-stage least squares model. Second, we perform a difference-in-differences analysis by exploiting China’s legal reform, Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors program, as a quasi-natural experiment. Third, we compare changes in corporate tax avoidance in response to a significant increase in FIIs. We further find that the negative association is dominated by FIIs from countries with high tax morale and FIIs from countries with strong shareholder protection. Finally, we find that the extent of tax morale and shareholder protection in the country where an investee firm is located also matters. We conclude that FIIs play an active role in shaping investee firms’ corporate tax avoidance policy

The effect of foreign institutional ownership on corporate tax avoidance: International evidence

We find that foreign institutional investors (FIIs) reduce their investee firms’ tax avoidance. We provide evidence that the effect is driven by the institutional distance between FIIs’ home countries/regions and host countries/regions. Specifically, we find that the effect is driven by the influence of FIIs from countries/regions with high-quality institutions (i.e., common law, high government effectiveness, and high regulatory quality) on investee firms located in countries/regions with low-quality institutions. Furthermore, we show that the effect is concentrated on FIIs with little experience in the investee countries/regions or FIIs with stronger monitoring incentives. Finally, we find that FIIs are more likely to vote against management if the firm has a higher level of tax avoidance

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

The effect of corporate culture on firm performance: Evidence from China

This study examines whether corporate culture promotion affects firm performance in China in terms of firm market value, firm financial performance and innovation output. We find consistent evidence that corporate culture promotion is negatively related to firm market value, positively related to innovation output and not significantly related to firm financial performance. In addition, the negative effect of corporate culture promotion on firm market value is driven by small firms and firms located in less developed provinces. Furthermore, we find that some specific corporate culture promotions, such as innovation culture promotion and integrity culture promotion, are not related to firm value or financial performance. However, innovation culture promotion is positively associated with innovation output. Keywords: Corporate culture promotion, Firm performance, Chin