Institutional Transformation, Institutional Imprinting and Female Board Representation

We obtain panel data from the CSMAR database, covering all A-share companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges. To achieve sample homogeneity, we (i) exclude financial institutions, (ii) eliminate firms designated as Special Treatment (ST or *ST) that are at risk of delisting, and (iii) retain only observations with complete data for all core variables. These filters generate 10,926 firm-year observations from 2016 to 2021. All continuous variables are winsorized at the 1st and 99th percentiles to mitigate the impact of outlier. In addition, the executive-pay variable (PAY3) is available for 10,746 firm-year observations; missing observations are primarily due to limited disclosure among newly listed or delinquent firms.