真实盈余管理与现金股利政策——来自中国上市公司的经验证据

本文利用2007～2011年7402个沪深A股上市公司样本,实证检验了上市公司真实盈余管理与现金股利政策间的关系,研究发现,真实盈余管理与现金股利分配倾向及现金股利分配力度间存在显著负相关关系,即真实盈余管理程度越高的上市公司,现金股利分配倾向就越低,而且分配的每股现金股利值也越低。进一步研究发现,真实盈余管理与现金股利政策间的负相关关系主要是由正向真实盈余管理的上市公司造成的。     

非定向增发与上市公司现金股利政策的实证研究

本文以2008年1045家沪深两市制造业上市公司为研究样本,利用样本公司2008年现金股利分配数据及2007-2008年非定向增发数据,检验了现金股利分配倾向和非定向增发行为之间的关系。研究发现,上市公司非定向增发行为对其现金股利分配倾向有显著影响,进行了非定向增发的公司比未进行非定向增发的公司具有更高的现金股利分配倾向。表明上市公司大股东利用控制权获取私人收益,转移上市公司现金,侵害了广大中小投资者的正当权益,增加了代理成本。并提出了相关的政策建议。     

股权结构对于现金股利支付倾向的影响研究

文章以2000--2010年A股市场分配现金股利与未分配股利的上市公司为研究对象,运用Logit回归模型,实证考察股权结构(包括股权集中度与股权属性)对现金股利支付倾向(即是否支付现金股利)的影响.研究发现:现金股利支付倾向与股权集中度呈显著正相关关系,但当上市公司进入全流通后,这种正相关显著降低;从股权属性来看,相比国有上市公司,非国有上市公司更加倾向于支付现金股利,但这种差异并不显著,而进入全流通后,国有上市及非国有上市公司均显著降低了现金股利支付倾向程度.此外,当民营上市公司负债水平较高或面临较多投资机会时更有现金股利支付倾向;盈利能力较差的上市公司相比其他公司更有现金股利支付倾向.     

非定向增发与上市公司现金股利政策的实证研究

本文以2008年1045家沪深两市制造业上市公司为研究样本,利用样本公司2008年现金股利分配数据及2007-2008年非定向增发数据,检验了现金股利分配倾向和非定向增发行为之间的关系。研究发现,上市公司非定向增发行为对其现金股利分配倾向有显著影响,进行了非定向增发的公司比未进行非定向增发的公司具有更高的现金股利分配倾向。表明上市公司大股东利用控制权获取私人收益,转移上市公司现金,侵害了广大中小投资者的正当权益,增加了代理成本。并提出了相关的政策建议。     

公司治理与现金股利分配倾向——来自中国上市公司的经验证据

本文以2002～2008年沪深A股765家上市公司为样本,实证检验公司治理结构对现金股利分配倾向的影响.结果发现:股权集中、国有控股、董事会规模大、高管薪酬高和选择四大会计师事务所的上市公司倾向分配现金股利,流通股比例高和独立董事规模大的公司不倾向分配现金股利,董事会领导权结构的影响不显著.同时,公司治理好的公司发放现金股利的倾向大,而公司治理差的公司的倾向小.进一步发现,中国上市公司具备发放现金股利的能力,却"不想"派现.     

论我国上市公司股利政策与产品市场竞争程度的关系——基于定性半强制分红与定量半强制分红的比较研究

股利政策迄今为止仍是个"谜题"。我国上市公司的股利政策一波三折,具有自身独特的制度背景。文章基于产品市场竞争程度这一新视角,研究中国A股上市公司现金股利政策与产品市场竞争程度的关系。结果发现:(1)2000年至2013年期间,整体来看我国A股上市公司现金股利政策与产品市场竞争不存在显著相关关系。但若考虑证监会在2006年进一步推动和强化上市公司的分红政策,即2006年实行定量的半强制分红政策,之前实行定性的半强制分红政策,并以2006年为界进行分组研究表明:2006年之前即定性政策阶段,现金股利政策与产品市场竞争存在显著正相关关系;2006年之后即定量政策阶段,现金股利政策与产品市场竞争关系发生逆转,呈显著负相关关系。(2)为了再融资,上市公司迎合定量的半强制分红政策要求,其分红意愿增强了,但股利支付率却下降了。(3)定量半强制分红政策弱化和扭曲了产品市场竞争与现金股利之间应有的相关关系。可见,2006年之后的定量半强制分红政策影响并改变了产品市场竞争对现金股利政策的作用机制。因此,为了消除"逆向选择",调整和取消半强制分红政策、将分红政策还给公司决策层有利于提高资本市场效率,这应该是未来我国证券监管部门的政策选择。     

生命周期理论视角下企业现金股利分配决策实证研究

本文利用我国上市公司1999～2008年度分红数据,实证检验了现金股利分配决策的影响因素,结果表明:股利生命周期理论较好地解释了上市公司的现金股利支付政策,即企业盈利能力强、投资机会少、留存收益占所有者权益比例高的企业更倾向于发放现金股利。     

控股股东股权质押对现金股利分配倾向的影响研究

本文以2007-2012年发生过控股股东股权质押行为的A股主板上市公司为研究样本,实证分析了股权质押比例对公司现金股利分配倾向的影响。研究发现,控股股东股权质押比例与现金股利分配倾向呈负相关关系,并且这种关系在民营上市公司中非常显著,而在国有控股上市公司中并不显著。     

上市公司股利分配问题探讨

我国上市公司股利分配有现金股利和股票股利(又称红股、送股)两种,资本公积转增股本和盈余公积转增股本,常常被上市公司作为股票股利的一种替代品。此外,还有非良性现金分红公司增多的新问题。同时,我国上市公司股利分配仍然存在现金股利支付率偏低、股利政策缺乏稳定性、送股和转增股支付与股价的波动相关性大这三大老问题。一、上市公司股利分配存在的问题1、上市公司股利政策缺乏稳定性。纵观国际证券市场,几乎所有的公司都倾向于采取平稳的股利支付政策,股利支付率几乎不受公司利润波动的影响,公司管理者在确信持续增加的利润能够支撑较…     

市场化进程与现金股利支付倾向——基于中小板上市公司的经验证据

本文以2004～2011年间中小板上市公司为样本,实证检验了地区市场化进程对中小板上市公司现金股利支付倾向的影响,研究发现:地区市场化进行与中小板现金股利支付倾向间存在显著地正相关关系。进一步研究发现,产品市场发育程度与要素市场发育程度导致了地区市场化进程与中小板上市公司现金股利支付倾向间存在了正相关的关系。     

Incentive Pay and Firm Performance: Moderating Roles of Procedural Justice Climate and Environmental Turbulence

In connection with the literature on strategic reward and agency theory, this study investigates the effects of incentive pay on employee outcomes and firm performance. We identify employee outcomes, such as commitment and competence, as mediating processes that explain the effects of incentive pay on firm performance. We further propose procedural justice climate and environmental turbulence as boundary conditions that determine the strength of the effects of incentive pay on employee outcomes. The research model is tested using multisource data collected at three time points over a five‐year period from 227 Korean companies. Our analysis confirmed that incentive pay enhanced employee commitment and competence, which, in turn, improved the operational and financial performances of firms. The effect of incentive pay on employee commitment was negative for firms with a low procedural justice climate, but positive for firms operated under a highly turbulent environment. By contrast, the effect of incentive pay on employee competence was positive only for firms operated under a stable environment. This study enriches the literature by presenting and validating plausible underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions under which strategic performance–contingent incentive pay affects firm performance. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Adoption and Coverage of Performance‐Related Pay during Institutional Change: An Integration of Institutional and Agency Theories

Whether or not to adopt and how extensively to use a newly legitimized practice are discrete decisions made by firms undergoing institutional change. The aim of this paper is to identify the distinct effects of economic, social, and political factors on the adoption of performance‐related pay practices and their coverage (i.e. the proportion of employees covered by the practices) by integrating institutional and agency theories. An empirical analysis is performed with a unique sample of Korean firms that experienced the East Asian financial crisis of 1997. The results show that while performance‐related pay adoption was influenced by economic and social factors, performance‐related pay coverage was related to political factors as well as economic and social factors. This finding suggests that while firms adopt performance‐related pay practices in search of legitimacy, they do not blindly imitate such practices but rather proactively adapt them based on economic efficiency considerations. This study makes valuable contributions to research on institutionalism and remuneration by empirically identifying the conditions under which a pay practice adopted for social legitimacy fits or fails to fit the economic needs of the adopters.     

Pay determination in small firms in the UK: the case of the response to the National Minimum Wage

Pay determination in small firms is widely expected to follow the dictates of the market. Research on 81 firms in three competitive sectors finds, instead, loosely defined and variable pay structures. This variability is explained in terms of the interplay between labour and product markets, firms’ own choices, and ‘shocks’ such as the National Minimum Wage. This analysis thus contributes to developing institutional theories of labour markets and pay systems.     

Court Intervention as a Governance Mechanism over CEO Pay: Evidence from the Citigroup Derivative Lawsuit

Abstract

We use an unanticipated court ruling in a lawsuit against Citigroup claiming corporate waste related to CEO pay to analyse court intervention as an alternative governance mechanism in cases of excess pay. We find a negative relation between announcement returns and excess pay, consistent with shareholders of these firms perceiving court intervention as net costly. However, we find a positive relation between announcement returns and excess pay accompanied by poor performance, suggesting that intervention is welcome when pay is more egregious. Finally, we find that firms with excess pay and whose shareholders welcome intervention reduce future pay relative to other firms, suggesting that the threat of court intervention is a potential mechanism to control excess pay.     

Not paying dividends? A decomposition of the decline in dividend payers

Current payout policy literature contends that firms’ propensity to pay dividends declined between 1978 and 1998. Using the Oaxaca decomposition methodology, we measure changes in the propensity to pay dividends between 1978 and 1998. Results suggest that firms today have only a slightly lower propensity to pay dividends. Furthermore, when we also categorize firms that use stock repurchases as dividend payers, we find that 100% of the decline in the proportion of dividend payers can be explained by changes in firm characteristics only. The difference is that firms that firms are now repurchasing stock instead of paying dividends.     

Cross-listing in the U.S. and domestic investor protection

Using the change in ordinary dividend payout as a proxy for improved governance, we show that cross-listing in the U.S. is associated with enhanced protection for the minority ordinary shareholders of exchange-listed non-U.S. firms. These firms substitute dividends for enhanced governance. We find no such effect for Rule 144a Portal firms. Interestingly, we document evidence inconsistent with the legal bonding hypothesis for Level 1 OTC firms. We believe that their ability to pay lower dividends post-listing is primarily due to their ability to credibly commit to fair treatment of their minority investors, given their record for equitable treatment of their ordinary shareholders. They achieve this reputation by consistently paying out a sizable proportion of their earnings as dividends. In addition, we find that the firm-level governance of Level 1 OTC firms, as measured by the number of closely held shares improves in the post-listing period. We find no such effect for SEC Rule 144a traded firms. Our results have also important implications for the agency models of dividends.     

Unshrouding for Competitive Advantage

In a market with hidden product details and systematic consumer biases, firms have the possibility to unshroud and thereby to rectify such market obliquities. While the classical view was that firms will have an incentive to unshroud, Gabaix and Laibson (2006) show that there exist constellations in which firms prefer to leave the market shrouded. Building on that model I introduce a more strategic and long‐term dimension of unshrouding which turns out to fundamentally alter the underlying incentives to unshroud. In particular, I show that there exists an incentive to unshroud that stems from differences in add‐on profitability and that it is dependent on parameter constellations whether a more profitable or a less profitable firm will want to unshroud.     

Monopolistic Competition and Public Good Provision with By‐Product Firms

I develop a model in which the voluntary contributions mechanism for the provision of public goods totally breaks down in a large society. A by‐product firm sells a private good and uses its profits to provide a public good. By‐product firms compete with for‐profit firms in a monopolistically competitive industry. If the number of by‐product firms is proportional to the size of the society, then public good provision rises without bound as the society grows large. This stands in strong contrast to the results under the voluntary contributions mechanism.     

Play It Again,Sam? Versioning in the Market for Second‐hand Video Game Software

Information goods are characterised by high fixed costs and low marginal costs of production. A potentially effective strategy that can be adopted by firms operating in such markets is versioning, whereby various features are added or subtracted from a number of distinct versions of the good. This effectively serves as a means of second‐degree price discrimination designed to extract prices closer to the maximum willingness to pay from different groups of consumers. This study tests the effectiveness of versioning as a means of exploiting differences in willingness to pay in second‐hand markets for information goods by undertaking the first hedonic price analysis of video gaming software. The empirical evidence presented in this paper is based on the analysis of an extensive cross‐sectional dataset consisting of over 5000 observations of pre‐owned video game prices in the USA. Controls are introduced for a variety of other observable characteristics, including the quality of the game‐play experience, the publisher, genre and theme of the game. The results are consistent with theoretical expectations and demonstrate that significant variations in willingness to pay can be exploited through the strategic use of versioning. The practice is therefore argued to represent an effective means by which firms in these markets can enhance revenues. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Flexible pay,firm performance and the role of unions. New evidence from Italy

This paper focuses on the effects of a shift in the firm pay strategy from a fixed wage to a flexible pay scheme on the performance of the “treated” firms. Theory predicts that the introduction of performance-related pay (PRP) may produce both incentive and sorting effects, making the incumbent workers more productive and attracting the most able workers from outside. Furthermore, productivity gains may be shared with the workers through higher wages and heterogeneous effects may be expected by union density. Matching estimates based on panel data for a representative sample of Italian metalworking firms in the 1990s show positive effects on labour productivity (around 7–11%) and to some extent on wages (around 2–3%), while worker sorting is negligible. Estimates by union density suggest that incentive effects are more present in low unionized firms, while wage effects are more significant in highly unionized ones. Extended sensitivity analysis shows that these results are overall robust with respect to the existence of unobserved confounding factors.