On April 12, 2024, Faculty of Finance at City University of Macau organized the fifteenth Finance Salon (2023-2024) at the Taipa campus. The seminar was hosted by Professor Dongmin Kong from Huazhong University of Science and Technology. He delivered a lecture on his research paper titled “Board Gender Diversity and Green Innovation: Evidence from the Relaxation of One-Child Policy in China”. This article examines the impact of board gender diversity on corporate green innovation. Based on the exogenous relaxation of China's one-child policy, this article first provides evidence that the relaxation of the one-child policy leads to a significant decline in board gender diversity. Then, through difference-in-differences estimation, the article shows that board gender diversity is positively related to corporate green innovation, which is robust to various endogeneity and sensitivity analyses. The mechanism behind this may be because of the gender diversity increases the number of board members with R&D background and cultivates the innovation culture of enterprises, thereby stimulating green innovation for enterprises.

Professor Kong is currently associate dean and professor of School of Economics at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. His research interests include corporate finance and capital markets. He has published articles in Journal of Public Economics, Management Science and Contemporary Accounting Research.

At this Finance Salon, Professor Kong had in-depth exchanges with teachers and students of the Faculty of Finance, broadening the academic perspective to all of us. The Finance Salon organized by Faculty of Finance at City University of Macau serves as a platform for exchanging academic ideas and fostering academic awareness. With finance as the main focus, we invite senior scholars/experts from academia and the financial industry to engage in research discussions on cutting-edge topics and share industry development trends, aiming to provide a fresh academic experience and thinking model for CityU students and members of the faculty. Through activities like the Finance Salon, we hope to offer graduate students a better academic platform, encouraging further exploration and research on academic issues.