Factors Influencing Dividend Policy Decisions of Nasdaq Firms

This study reports the results of a 1999 survey of Nasdaq‐listed firms. Respondents provided information about the importance of 22 different factors that influence their dividend policy. Our results suggest that many managers of Nasdaq firms make dividend decisions consistent with Lintner's (1956) survey results and model. The results also show significant differences between the manager responses of financial and non‐financial firms on nine of the 22 factors. This finding implies the presence of industry effects on dividend policy decisions. In general, the same factors that are important to Nasdaq firms are also important to NYSE firms.     

盐田港12年派现路

分析盐田港12年的发展历程,可以看出,其股利政策具有一定的特点,考量股利政策的合理性、可持续性,或许能够发现股利派现对公司价值的影响。     

上市公司现金股利政策影响因素研究综述

我国上市公司现金股利政策存在制定缺乏科学性、制度性以及投资者回报率低等问题,严重影响了公司未来的融资能力、资本结构和经营业绩.本文从公司内部环境和外部环境两个角度对我国1999年至2010年有关现金股利政策的影响因素的主要研究成果进行综述.     

Dividend Policy in Switzerland

The paper examines dividend policy for a sample of Swiss companies. Several factors that determine cross-sectional variations in dividend policy – such as profitability, growth opportunities, and riskiness – are identified. Price volatility seems to stand out as the most significant factor. Looking at the relationship between dividends and earnings over time, dividend changes are more closely linked to past and current rather than future net income growth. However, they do confirm a persistent shift in the level of earnings. There is also a significant relationship between losses and dividend cuts. These findings suggest that it is the managers’ reluctance to cut dividends that gives informational content to dividend changes.     

Dividend Policy and Reputation

Abstract:  We examine the role of reputation when firms use dividends to signal their profitability. We analyze a signaling model in which reputation plays no role in equilibrium. We then show that taking reputation into account as a link between sequential dividend decisions makes it possible to endogenize signaling costs and obtain a separating equilibrium. Lastly, we use the reversibility hypothesis and assume that in each period, managers can reverse their choices in terms of dividend distribution. We find that in most cases, the signaling equilibrium becomes unstable, causing any dividend signaling policy to become difficult to implement.     

私募股权投资与现金股利政策

本文研究私募股权投资对被投资公司现金股利政策的影响。研究发现,有私募股权投资参与的公司更倾向于分配现金股利,且现金股利支付率较高,表明私募股权投资不仅影响公司现金股利的分配倾向,还影响现金股利的分配力度。进一步研究发现,私募股权投资的特征同样影响公司的现金股利政策,具体来说,外资背景、投资规模越大、投资期限越长和联合投资的私募股权投资参与的公司更倾向于分配现金股利且现金股利支付率较高。本文的结论对于完善公司现金股利政策以及保护中小投资者利益有重要的启示作用。     

Asymmetric Information and Dividend Policy

We examine how informational asymmetries affect firms' dividend policies. We find that firms that are more subject to information asymmetry are less likely to pay, initiate, or increase dividends, and disburse smaller amounts. We show that our main results are not driven by our sample and that our results persist after accounting for the changing composition of payout over the sample period, the increasing importance of institutional shareholdings, and catering incentives. We conclude that there is a negative relation between asymmetric information and dividend policy. Our results do not support the signaling theory of dividends.     

Shareholder Preferences and Dividend Policy

This paper develops a theory of choice among alternative procedures for distributing cash from corporations to shareholders. Despite the preferential tax treatment of capital gains for individual investors, it is shown that a majority of a firm's shareholders may support a dividend payment for small distributions. For larger distributions an open market stock repurchase is likely to be preferred by a majority of shareholders, and for the largest distributions tender offer repurchases dominate.     

Dividend Policy under Asymmetric Information

We extend the standard finance model of the firm's dividend/investment/financing decisions by allowing the firm's managers to know more than outside investors about the true state of the firm's current earnings. The extension endogenizes the dividend (and financing) announcement effects amply documented in recent research. But once trading of shares is admitted to the model along with asymmetric information, the familiar Fisherian criterion for optimal investment becomes time inconsistent: the market's belief that the firm is following the Fisher rule creates incentives to violate the rule. We show that an informationally consistent signalling equilibrium exists under asymmetric information and the trading of shares that restores the time consistency of investment policy, but leads in general to lower levels of investment than the optimum achievable under full information and/or no trading. Contractual provisions that change the information asymmetry or the possibility of profiting from it could eliminate both the time inconsistency and the inefficiency in investment policies, but these contractual provisions too are likely to involve dead-weight costs. Establishing which route or combination of routes serves in practice to maintain consistency remains for future research.     

Dividend Policy and Corporate Performance

Substantial research has been conducted to determine the signal that results from dividend initiations and omissions. Our study extends from previous research by measuring the long-term valuation effects following dividend initiations and omissions. We find that firms initiating dividends experience favorable long-term share price performance. Conversely, firms omitting dividends experience unfavorable long-term share price performance. The long-term valuation effects resulting from dividend initiations are more favorable for firms that are smaller, that overinvest, and that had relatively poor performance prior to the initiations. The long-term effects resulting from dividend omissions are more unfavorable for large firms and for firms experiencing relatively large dividend omissions.     

Board Connections and Dividend Policy

We examine the role of firm board connectedness in shaping a firm's dividend policy. We show that firms with well-connected boards not only have a higher likelihood of paying dividends in the pooled sample of both dividend payers and non-payers but also pay more dividends in the sample of dividend payers, compared with those with poorly connected boards. Further analysis reveals that the relation between board connectedness and dividend-paying behaviour tends to be economically stronger in firms pre-identified to have more severe agency conflicts, suggesting that well-connected boards tend to use dividends to mitigate agency problems in these firms. These findings are robust to different measures of board connectedness, different dividend payout measures, alternative estimation methods, and tests that account for endogeneity.     

股利分配和股利收益率的国际比较研究

本文采用沪深300指数和S＆P500。指数成分股作为样本比较分析中美两国上市公司派发现金股利的特征。结果发现，与美国上市公司相比，我国上市公司股利分配至少存在以下问题：连续派现能力差、股利与业绩相关性较小和投资者获取得股利收益率较低。     

行为股利政策研究:一个文献综述

建立在行为金融学基础上的行为股利政策理论,充分考虑了市场参与者的心理因素的作用,为人们研究金融市场股利分配异象提供了新的视角。我国的行为股利政策研究目前主要集中并停留于对国外研究成果的归纳、总结及介绍上,因而,借鉴西方行为股利政策的研究成果,并结合我国实际,来深入研究我国证券市场上的股利政策现象与问题将具有十分重要的理论意义与实践意义。     

Determinants of Corporate Dividend Policy: A Factorial Analysis

This paper re-examines the dividend policy issue by conducting a simultaneous test of the alternative explanations of corporate payout policy using a two-step procedure that involves factor analysis and multiple regression. Several new proxies for theoretical attributes that have appeared in the literature are introduced, including the role of managerial dimensions in determining dividend policy. Strong support is found for the transaction cost/residual theory of dividends. pecking order argument, and the role of dividends in mitigating agency problems. Strong support is also found for the role of managerial consideration in affecting the firm's payout policy; specifically, firms that maintain stable dividend policies and firms that enjoy financial flexibility pay higher dividends. The results appear to support the tax clientele argument.     

Asymmetric Cost Behavior and Dividend Policy

Costs are sticky on average, that is, they fall less for sales decreases than they rise for equivalent sales increases. We examine the effect of this asymmetric cost behavior on a firm's dividend policy. Given investors’ aversion to dividend cuts, we predict that firms with higher resource adjustment costs and stickier costs pay lower dividends than their peers because they are less able to sustain any higher level of dividend payouts in the future. We find evidence consistent with this prediction. Further, using a regression discontinuity design that exploits variation in labor adjustment costs generated by close-call union elections, we provide evidence suggesting that the negative relation between cost stickiness and dividend payouts is driven by resource adjustment costs. Our paper sheds new light on the determinants of dividend policy and demonstrates the role of cost behavior in corporate decisions.     

股利政策与中小投资者利益损害问题——对我国上市公司之低股利＋负增长陷阱的实证研究

现代公司财务理论证明，在公司本身存在良好的投资机会时，较低的股利支付率符合股东利益最大化的原则。但是如果在公司长期实行低股利政策甚至不发放股利的情况下，公司的增长率未能达到与留存收益率相符的水平，则投资者的利益受到损害。……