OPTIMAL REINSURANCE AND DIVIDEND DISTRIBUTION POLICIES IN THE CRAMÉR-LUNDBERG MODEL

We consider that the reserve of an insurance company follows a Cramér-Lundberg process. The management has the possibility of controlling the risk by means of reinsurance. Our aim is to find a dynamic choice of both the reinsurance policy and the dividend distribution strategy that maximizes the cumulative expected discounted dividend payouts. We study the usual cases of excess-of-loss and proportional reinsurance as well as the family of all possible reinsurance contracts. We characterize the optimal value function as the smallest viscosity solution of the associated Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation and we prove that there exists an optimal band strategy. We also describe the optimal value function for small initial reserves.     

Dividend policy and capital structure of a defaultable firm

Default risk significantly affects the corporate policies of a firm. We develop a model in which a limited liability entity subject to default at an exponential random time jointly sets its dividend policy and capital structure to maximize the expected lifetime utility from consumption of risk‐averse equity investors. We give a complete characterization of the solution to the singular stochastic control problem. The optimal policy involves paying dividends to keep the ratio of firm's equity value to investors' wealth below a critical threshold. Dividend payout acts as a precautionary channel to transfer wealth from the firm to investors for mitigation of losses in the event of default. Higher the default risk, more aggressively the firm leverages and pays dividends.     

The financial determinants of corporate cash holdings: Evidence from some emerging markets

This paper investigates corporate cash holdings in developing countries. In particular, we look into the effect of capital structure and dividend policy on cash holdings in Brazil, Russia, India, and China and compare our results with a control sample from the US and the UK. Our sample contains 1992 firms across these countries for the period 2002–2008. We employ Instrumental Variables analysis to control for the endogeneity of the financial policies (cash holdings, capital structure, and dividend policy). Our results show some evidence that capital structure and dividend policy affect cash holdings. There are similarities between developed and developing countries on the factors determining corporate cash holdings. The results of our cross-country model provide evidence that capital structure, dividend policy, and firm size are important factors in determining cash holdings. Finally, we show that firms operating in countries with low shareholder protection hold more cash.     

Controlling Risk Exposure and Dividends Payout Schemes:Insurance Company Example

The paper represents a model for financial valuation of a firm which has control of the dividend payment stream and its risk as well as potential profit by choosing different business activities among those available to it. This model extends the classical Miller–Modigliani theory of firm valuation to the situation of controllable business activities in a stochastic environment. We associate the value of the company with the expected present value of the net dividend distributions (under the optimal policy). The example we consider is a large corporation, such as an insurance company, whose liquid assets in the absence of control fluctuate as a Brownian motion with a constant positive drift and a constant diffusion coefficient. We interpret the diffusion coefficient as risk exposure, and drift is understood as potential profit. At each moment of time there is an option to reduce risk exposure while simultaneously reducing the potential profit—for example, by using proportional reinsurance with another carrier for an insurance company. Management of a company controls the dividends paid out to the shareholders, and the objective is to find a policy that maximizes the expected total discounted dividends paid out until the time of bankruptcy. Two cases are considered: one in which the rate of dividend payout is bounded by some positive constant M, and one in which there is no restriction on the rate of dividend payout. We use recently developed techniques of mathematical finance to obtain an easy understandable closed form solution. We show that there are two levels u₀ and u₁ with u₀≤u₁. As a function of currently available reserve, the risk exposure monotonically increases on (0,u₀) from 0 to the maximum possible. When the reserve exceeds u₁ the dividends are paid at the maximal rate in the first case and in the second case every excess above u₁ is distributed as dividend. We also show that for M small enough u₀=u₁ and the optimal risk exposure is always less than the maximal.     

OPTIMAL DIVIDEND POLICY WITH MEAN-REVERTING CASH RESERVOIR

Motivated by empirical evidence and economic arguments, we assume that the cash reservoir of a financial corporation follows a mean reverting process. The firm must decide the optimal dividend strategy, which consists of the optimal times and the optimal amounts to pay as dividends. We model this as a stochastic impulse control problem, and succeed in finding an analytical solution. We also find a formula for the expected time between dividend payments. A crucial and surprising economic result of our paper is that, as the dividend tax rate decreases, it is optimal for the shareholders to receive smaller but more frequent dividend payments. This results in a reduction of the probability of default of the firm.     

Variance decomposition of the country,industry, firm,and firm-year effects on dividend policy

Why some firms distribute generous cash dividends while others are reluctant to do so remains an unanswered question despite decades of scholarly examination. Although the extant literature on dividend policy has explored the effects of determinants at the country, industry, firm, and firm-year levels, it remains unclear whether and how much each level of analysis matters to dividend policy. Consequently, this study seeks to move the literature forward by decomposing the variance at each level associated with dividend policies in a global sample of 8903 firms over an 11-year time period. We employ hierarchical linear modeling and find that all four levels of analysis help to explain dividend policy, but the firm and firm-year effects account for the majority of variance. Furthermore, decomposing the variance within each year reveals that the firm level has the strongest effect on dividend policy. Finally, while the variance in dividend policy explained by each level varies according to the dividend policy measure used, it is largely stable over our study period. We discuss implications of these findings for future research on dividend policy and for the field of comparative corporate governance.     

SHAREHOLDER RISK MEASURES

The aim of this paper is to put forward a new family of risk measures that could guide investment decisions of private companies. But at the difference of the classical approach of Artzner, Delbaen, Eber, and Heath and the subsequent extensions of this model, our risk measures are built to reflect the risk perception of shareholders rather than regulators. Instead of an axiomatic approach, we derive risk measures from the optimal policies of a shareholder value‐maximizing company. We study these optimal policies and the related risk measures that we call shareholder risk measures. We emphasize the fact that due to the specific corporate environment, in particular the limited shareholders' liability and the possibility to pay out dividends from cash reserves, these risk measures are not convex. Also, they depend on the specific economic situation of the firm, in particular its current cash level, and thus they are not translation invariant. This paper bridges the gap between two important branches of mathematical finance: risk measures and optimal dividends.     

CLASSICAL AND IMPULSE STOCHASTIC CONTROL FOR THE OPTIMIZATION OF THE DIVIDEND AND RISK POLICIES OF AN INSURANCE FIRM

This paper deals with the dividend optimization problem for a financial or an insurance entity which can control its business activities, simultaneously reducing the risk and potential profits. It also controls the timing and the amount of dividends paid out to the shareholders. The objective of the corporation is to maximize the expected total discounted dividends paid out until the time of bankruptcy. Due to the presence of a fixed transaction cost, the resulting mathematical problem becomes a mixed classical-impulse stochastic control problem. The analytical part of the solution to this problem is reduced to quasivariational inequalities for a second-order nonlinear differential equation. We solve this problem explicitly and construct the value function together with the optimal policy. We also compute the expected time between dividend payments under the optimal policy.     

Wages,Health Insurance Benefits,and Worker Sorting Under Asymmetric Information

Abstract

Employer-sponsored health insurance is the single largest source of health insurance in the USA. In this paper, we explore a model that treats a firm as a de facto insurance company. More specifically, we model a firm as both a producer of goods for an output market and a health insurance company for their employees. The model accounts for the joint provision of wages and health insurance, including the possibility of asymmetric information in employee health status. With this structure, a firm can choose to pay their workers in some combination of cash wages and health insurance. We characterize optimal employment contracts and show that the Rothschild–Stiglitz model results under asymmetric information extend to employer provided insurance. We also find that employment-based insurance offers pooling options that are typically not available when insurance is sold as a standalone product, suggesting a stability to employer-based insurance that is not dependent on the tax system.     

Approximation of Optimal Reinsurance and Dividend Payout Policies

We consider the stochastic process of the liquid assets of an insurance company assuming that the management can control this process in two ways: first, the risk exposure can be reduced by affecting reinsurance, but this decreases the premium income; and second, a dividend has to be paid out to the shareholders. The aim is to maximize the expected discounted dividend payout until the time of bankruptcy. The classical approach is to model the liquid assets or risk reserve process of the company as a piecewise deterministic Markov process. However, within this setting the control problem is very hard. Recently several papers have modeled this problem as a controlled diffusion, presuming that the policy obtained is in some sense good for the piecewise deterministic problem as well. We will clarify this statement in our paper. More precisely, we will first show that the value function of the controlled diffusion provides an asymptotic upper bound for the value functions of the piecewise deterministic problems under diffusion scaling. Finally it will be shown that the upper bound is achieved in the limit under the optimal feedback control of the diffusion problem. This property is called asymptotic optimality .     

低现金股利政策、股东财富与控股股东决策

根据Jensen的自有现金流量假说,在不考虑股票回购条件下,将公司支付的现金股利数量低于自由现金流量定义为低现金股利政策.研究显示,低现金股利政策不利于股东财富最大化,在低现金股利政策范围内,提高现金股利会提高股东财富.但从控股股东财富最大化出发,实施低现金股利政策有助于实现其获取控制权私有收益以本身的财富最大化.     

会计盈余信息含量与股利信息含量关系的实证研究

2001年以后,我国证券市场制度建设不断推进,对投资者利益的保护日益受到广泛重视,上市公司的现金股利政策发生了显著变化。同时,我国上市公司的盈利信息和股利信息是同时公布的,因此有必要对上市公司的现金股利信息含量,以及会计盈余信息含量与股利信息含量的确证效应进行检验。实证结果发现:现金股利的变动与股价变动正相关,股利信息具有信息含量;盈利信息与股利信息之间具有一定的确证效应,但投资者不能根据股利信息判断企业未来盈利状况。     

Who should sell stocks?

Never selling stocks is optimal for investors with a long horizon and a realistic range of preference and market parameters, if relative risk aversion, investment opportunities, proportional transaction costs, and dividend yields are constant. Such investors should buy stocks when their portfolio weight is too low and otherwise hold them, letting dividends rebalance to cash over time rather than selling. With capital gains taxes, this policy outperforms both static buy‐and‐hold and dynamic rebalancing strategies that account for transaction costs. Selling stocks becomes optimal if either their target weight is low or intermediate consumption is substantial.     

Dividend decisions and the structure of the life insurance industry

The behavior of life insurance company dividend decision-making is modeled for both stock and mutual companies. Insurer payout behavior, regardless of organizational form, follows a “savings” pattern which buffers the dividend stream from short-run variability. Thus total payouts to policyholders and/or stockholders reflect long-term results rather than annual experience. Variables important in explaining annual changes in dividend levels are related to the organizational structure of the insurer. Whereas mutual companies primarily relate the change in payout to volume, stock companies' payout differentials are primarily a function of earnings. The study also examines the relative importance of policy reserves, contingency reserves, and surplus in dividend decisions.     

现金持有、融资约束与企业价值——基于门槛回归模型的实证检验

文章基于门槛回归模型,对融资约束是否会影响现金及超额现金与企业价值的关系进行实证检验。结果表明,现金及超额现金与企业价值的关系均存在显著的门槛效应。在弱融资约束企业,现金及超额现金的账面价值高于其市场价值,而在强融资约束企业,现金及超额现金的账面价值低于其市场价值,这支持了代理理论和融资约束理论,说明弱融资约束企业滥用现金的代理问题较为严重,现金持有对企业价值具有负向影响,强融资约束企业持有现金,能够抓住更多投资机会,现金持有对企业价值具有正向影响。     

Influence of dividend tax policy tied to investment horizon on stock price stability: Evidence from the 2015 dividend tax reform in China

We examine how the dividend tax cut policy tied to the investment horizon enforced on September 8, 2015, influences stock price stability in China's A-share market. As the new dividend tax policy waives the tax on cash dividends for investors holding a stock for more than a year, it encourages long-term investment behavior. From 2013 to 2017, we find that stock turnover, return volatility, and turnover volatility decrease after the policy enforcement, especially for stocks with high dividend yields. This result shows that dividend tax reforms increase investors' stock investment horizons and help stabilize the market. However, our findings demonstrate that stock crash risk increases after policy enforcement. Further analysis shows that earnings management through real activities manipulation for stocks with a higher dividend yield contributes to an increase in stock crash risk. Therefore, one externality of the dividend tax cut policy tied to the investment horizon is that top managers of firms with a higher dividend yield may take advantage of investors' passive longer-term investment behavior and engage in more earnings management. This result suggests that regulatory agencies should pay attention to top managers' earnings management behavior after enacting policies that encourage long-term investment.     

Instability in the dividend policy of the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) corporations: evidence from an emerging market

Dividend policy behaviour of corporations operating in emerging markets is significantly different from the widely accepted dividend policy behaviour of corporations operating in developed markets. This study provides evidence from the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE), an emerging European stock market, and analyses empirically whether the ISE corporations follow stable cash dividend policies in a regulatory environment that imposed mandatory dividend policies. Unlike the empirical results supporting the stable dividend policy behaviour of corporations operating in developed markets, the empirical results show that the ISE corporations follow unstable cash dividend policies and the main factor that determines the amount of cash dividends is the earnings of the corporation in that year.     

中国上市公司股利变动与经营业绩相关性分析

用2000—2004年间现金股利变动的中国上市公司为样本,考察公司股利变动与经营业绩之间的关系,实证结果表明:增加股利和首次发放股利的公司在公告前两年收益增加,在公告后两年收益减小;而减小和停发股利的公司情况正好相反。中国上市公司的股利政策主要是依据过去和当前的经营业绩而不是未来预期的经营业绩,实证结果与股利信号假设预测不一致。进一步检验发现,尽管短期内市场对股利增加公告有正面反应,对股利减小有负面反应,但市场对股利公告的长期反应与短期反应截然相反。     

现金股利政策影响因素研究综述

在西方成熟资本市场中,现金分红是上市公司经营管理过程中一项正常的决策行为,也是上市公司最普遍最为常见的股利分配形式.对于上市工资制定现金股利政策的动因,国外学者的实证研究成果主要集中在派现与利润的关系、派现与投、融资的关系、派现与成长机会的关系、派现与行业类别的关系等方面.与国外相对成熟的现金股利政策动因的实证研究相比,目前国内的实证研究还处于起步阶段,且主要集中在公司财务状况影响、股权集中度的影响、政策导向的影响方面.     

现金分红、债务政策稳健性与公司业绩

上市公司现金分红和债务决策是资本市场关注的热点问题。文章以我国A股上市公司为研究对象,考察了现金分红与债务政策稳健性及其对企业业绩的影响关系。研究发现上市公司现金分红行为对公司债务政策稳健性有着显著的影响,相对于无现金分红公司而言,现金分红公司有着更高的债务政策稳健性;现金分红公司的业绩水平显著高于无现金分红公司的对应水平,说明上市公司现金分红行为对公司业绩的提升具有促进作用;在现金分红与公司业绩的关系中,债务政策稳健性具有显著的中介效应。上述研究结论对规范我国上市公司现金分红行为、揭示其对债务政策稳健性与公司业绩的影响具有一定的理论和实践意义。