Stock market reaction to dividend announcements: Evidence from the Greek stock market

This study investigates the market reaction to cash dividend announcements for the period 2000–2004 employing data from the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE). In particular, the paper examines both the stock price and trading volume response to dividend distribution announcements. Dividend distributions in Greece demonstrate noticeable differences to those of the US, the UK and other developed markets. First, dividends in Greece are paid annually rather than quarterly or semi-annually. Second, the Greek corporate laws 2190/1920 and 148/1967 specifically designate the minimum amount for distribution from the taxed corporate profits. Third, neither tax on dividends nor on capital gains was imposed during the period under examination. Fourth, Greek listed firms are characterized by high ownership concentration where major owners are usually involved in management and therefore have less need for dividend announcements as an information source. Despite this neutralized information and tax environment, we document significant market reaction to dividend change announcements, lending support to the “information content of dividends hypothesis”.     

Price Bubbles in Laboratory Asset Markets with Constant Fundamental Values

We construct asset markets that are similar to those studied by Smith, Suchanek and Williams (Econometrica. 56, 1119–1151) in which bubbles and crashes tended to occur. The main difference between the markets studied here and those studied by Smith et al. is that in the markets studied here, the fundamental value of the asset is constant over the entire life of the asset. In four of the eight sessions reported here, we observe bubbles, which are prices considerably higher than fundamental values. The data suggest that the frequent payment of dividends is a major cause of bubble formation. The property that the fundamental value remains constant over the course of the trading horizon is not sufficient to eliminate the possibility of a bubble.     

Double Bubbles in Assets Markets With Multiple Generations

We construct an asset market in a finite horizon overlapping-generations environment. Subjects are tested for comprehension of their fundamental value exchange environment and then reminded during each of 25 periods of the environment's declining new value. We observe price bubbles forming when new generations enter the market with additional liquidity and bursting as old generations exit the market and withdrawing cash. The entry and exit of traders in the market creates an M shaped double bubble price path over the life of the traded asset. This finding is significant in documenting that bubbles can reoccur within one extended trading horizon and, consistent with previous cross-subject comparisons, shows how fluctuations in market liquidity influence price paths. We also find that trading experience leads to price expectations that incorporate fundamental value.     

连续进化金融模型与全局渐进化稳定策略

本文运用达尔文生物进化论思想研究连续交易金融市场选择的动态变化及一般均衡规律。本文发现并证明了:金融资产“赢利”的充要条件是该资产相对股息大于相对股价;投资比例等于股息分发比例的简单混合策略是全局渐近进化稳定策略;在均衡条件下,对应的金融资产价格等于该资产股息占总股息的比例的数学期望;市场变异或金融创新是有效市场形成的动力;全局渐近进化稳定策略业绩可能在某些时候不是最好的,但只要其初始财富大于零,最终将控制市场上的所有财富,而简单混合策略,可能在某个时候业绩优良,然而,在市场存在全局渐近进化稳定策略的条件下,只要其初始财富份额小于1,最终控制的财富趋向于零,从而被市场所淘汰。     

When does the share price equal the present value of future dividends?

Summary This paper discusses an explicit necessary and sufficient condition on the dividend stream of a publicly traded company, under which the price of the company's share is equal to the present value of the future dividends that will accrue to it. When it is not, the share price equals the present value of the future per share dividend plus the limiting per share value of the company at infinity. It uses a well-accepted generalization of the Miller-Modigliani framework, and assumes that the firm is an infinite horizon firm which may engage in repurchasing its own shares. It develops a proper dividend approach that can value such a firm for any dividend stream. The paper concludes by clarifying some remarks in the Miller-Modigliani paper.For helpful discussions and comments, I thank Laurence Booth. Mike Gordon, Robert Jarrow, Raymond Kan, Rajnish Mehra, David Quirin, and Rishin Roy. Support from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada is greatly appreciated.     

Financial Bubbles: Excess Cash,Momentum, and Incomplete Information

We report on a large number of laboratory market experiments demonstrating that a market bubble can be reduced under the following conditions: 1) a low initial liquidity level, i.e., less total cash than value of total shares, 2) deferred dividends, and 3) a bid-ask book that is open to traders. Conversely, a large bubble arises when the opposite conditions exist. The first part of the article is comprised of twenty-five experiments with varying levels of total cash endowment per share (liquidity level), payment or deferral of dividends and an open or closed bid-ask book. We find that the liquidity level has a very strong influence on the mean and maximum prices during an experiment (P < 1/10,000). These results suggest that within the framework of the classical bubble experiments (dividends distributed after each period and closed book), each dollar per share of additional cash results in a maximum price that is $1 per share higher. There is also limited statistical support for the theory that deferred dividends (which also lower the cash per share during much of the experiment) and an open book lead to a reduced bubble. The three factors taken together show a striking difference in the median magnitude of the bubble ($7.30 versus $0.22 for the maximum deviation from fundamental value). Another set of twelve experiments features a single dividend at the end of fifteen trading periods and establishes a 0.8 correlation between price and liquidity during the early periods of the experiments. As a result, calibration of prices and evolution toward equilibrium price as a function of liquidity are possible.     

Overconfidence and Bubbles in Experimental Asset Markets

This paper investigates the relationship between market overconfidence and occurrence of stock-price bubbles. Sixty participants traded stocks in 10 experimental asset markets. Markets were constructed on the basis of subjects' overconfidence: The most overconfident subjects form high overconfidence markets and the least overconfident subjects low overconfidence markets. Prices in low overconfidence markets tend to track the fundamental asset value more accurately than prices in high overconfidence markets and are significantly lower and less volatile. Additionally, we observe significantly higher bubble measures and trading volume in high overconfidence markets. Two possible explanations for these differences are analyzed: While price expectations are significantly higher in high overconfidence markets, no differences in the average degree of risk aversion were detected.     

Dividend policy and investor pressure

The economics of dividend policy has focused on the single tight narrative that dividends keep managers honest, mitigating concerns that they over-invest. This article provides a critique of that agency narrative, arguing that pressure from short-term focused investors, executives and board members pushes the firm into preemptive actions of returning too much cash via dividends. We analyze three channels of influence for investor pressure through 1) threat of takeovers, 2) shareholder value oriented corporate governance, measured by director independence and board equity incentives, and 3) trading and institutional ownership patterns. We find that firms adopt a higher dividend payout to discourage takeover bids. Also, FTSE 100 firms, that are most focused on shareholder value governance in the form of equity-based compensation and a higher share of independent directors, display a higher dividend payout. Frequency of trading and ownership by transient investors seeking current profits also predict increased dividend payout. Traditional agency theory, focused on dividends as a tool for managerial discipline, is not strongly supported by the results, which rather support a narrative of short-term investor pressure on firms irrespective of investment opportunities.     

BUBBLES,CRASHES, AND ENDOGENOUS UNCERTAINTY IN LINKED ASSET AND PRODUCT MARKETS*

In laboratory asset markets, subjects trade shares of a firm whose profits in a linked product market determine dividends. Treatments vary whether dividend information is revealed once per period or in real time and whether the firm is controlled by a profit‐maximizing robot or human subject. The latter variation induces uncertainty about firm behavior, bridging the gap between laboratory and field markets. Our data replicate well‐known features of laboratory asset markets (e.g., bubbles), suggesting these are robust to a market‐based dividend process. Compared to a sample of previous experiments, both real‐time information revelation and endogenous uncertainty impede the bubble‐mitigating impact of experience.     

STOCK PRICE VOLATILITY,NEGATIVE AUTOCORRELATION AND THE CONSUMPTION–WEALTH RATIO: THE CASE OF CONSTANT FUNDAMENTALS

Based on infinite horizon models, previous theoretical works show that the empirical stock price movement is not justified by the changes in dividends. The present paper provides a simple overlapping generations model with constant fundamentals in which the stock price displays volatility and negative autocorrelation even without changes in dividend. The horizon of the agents matters. In addition, as in recent empirical works, the aggregate consumption–wealth ratio ‘predicts’ the asset return. Thus, this framework may be useful in understanding different stylized facts in asset pricing. Directions for future research are also discussed.     

Dividends in the theory of derivative securities pricing

This paper develops the fundamental aspects of the theory of martingale pricing of derivative securites in a setting where the cumulative gains processes are Itô processes while the cumulative dividend processes of both the underliers and the derivative securities are general enough to cover all cases encountered in practical applications. A key ingredient is a general formula for how to change the unit of account of a cumulative dividend process. The formula is inconsistent with parts of the earlier literature. It obeys a unit-invariance rule for trading strategies, satisfies a consistency property when the unit is changed twice in a row, gives the correct results in well-known and uncontroversial special cases, and fits perfectly into a generalization of the martingale valuation theory. Using that generalized theory, we show that the value of a dividend process equals the value of a claim to the nominal amount of dividends yet to be accumulated plus the value of a flow of interest on the cumulative dividends at each point in time.     

Asset price bubbles in Arrow-Debreu and sequential equilibrium

Summary. Price bubbles in an Arrow-Debreu equilibrium in an infinite-time economy are a manifestation of lack of countable additivity of valuation of assets. In contrast, the known examples of price bubbles in a sequential equilibrium in infinite time cannot be attributed to the lack of countable additivity of valuation. In this paper we develop a theory of valuation of assets in sequential markets (with no uncertainty) and study the nature of price bubbles in light of this theory. We define a payoff pricing operator that maps a sequence of payoffs to the minimum cost of an asset holding strategy that generates it. We show that the payoff pricing functional is linear and countably additive on the set of positive payoffs if and only if there is no Ponzi scheme, provided that there is no restriction on long positions in the assets. In the known examples of equilibrium price bubbles in sequential markets valuation is linear and countably additive. The presence of a price bubble means that the dividends of an asset can be purchased in sequential markets at a cost lower than the asset's price. We present further examples of equilibrium price bubbles in which valuation is nonlinear, or linear but not countably additive.     

Overreactions,Momentum, Liquidity,and Price Bubbles in Laboratory and Field Asset Markets

Laboratory asset markets provide an experimental setting in which to observe investor behavior. Over more than a decade, numerous studies have found that participants in laboratory experiments frequently drive asset prices far above fundamental value, after which the prices crash. This bubble-and-crash behavior is robust to variations in a number of variables, including liquidity (the amount of cash available relative to the value of the assets being traded), short-selling, certainty or uncertainty of dividend payments, brokerage fees, capital gains taxes, buying on margin, and others.

This paper attempts to model the behavior of asset prices in experimental settings by proposing a "momentum model" of asset price changes. The model assumes that investors follow a combination of two factors when setting prices: fundamental value, and the recent price trend. The predictions of the model, while still far from perfect, are superior to those of a rational expectations model, in which traders consider only fundamental value. In particular, the momentum model predicts that higher levels of liquidity lead to larger price bubbles, a result that is confirmed in the experiments. The similarity between laboratory results and data from field (real-world) markets suggests that the momentum model may be applicable there as well.     

The Effects of Subject Pool and Design Experience on Rationality in Experimental Asset Markets

Empirical evidence suggests that prices do not always reflect fundamental values and individual behavior is often inconsistent with rational expectations theory. We report the results of fourteen experimental asset markets designed to examine whether the interactive effect of subject pool and design experience (i.e., previous experience in a market under identical conditions) tempers price bubbles and improves forecasting ability. Our main findings are: 1) price run-ups are modest and dissipate quickly when traders are knowledgeable about financial markets and have participated in a previous market under identical conditions; 2) price bubbles moderate quickly when only a subset of traders are knowledgeable and experienced; 3) the heterogeneity of expectations about price changes is smaller in markets with knowledgeable and experienced traders, even if such traders only represent a subset of the market; and 4) individual forecasts of prices are not consistent with the predictions of the rational expectations model in any market, although absolute forecast errors are smaller for subjects who are knowledgeable of financial markets and for those subjects who have participated in a previous market. In sum, our findings suggest that markets populated by at least a subset of knowledgeable and experienced traders behave rationally, even though average individual behavior can be characterized as irrational.     

Internal rationality, imperfect market knowledge and asset prices

We present a decision theoretic framework in which agents are learning about market behavior and that provides microfoundations for models of adaptive learning. Agents are ‘internally rational’, i.e., maximize discounted expected utility under uncertainty given dynamically consistent subjective beliefs about the future, but agents may not be ‘externally rational’, i.e., may not know the true stochastic process for payoff relevant variables beyond their control. This includes future market outcomes and fundamentals. We apply this approach to a simple asset pricing model and show that the equilibrium stock price is then determined by investors? expectations of the price and dividend in the next period, rather than by expectations of the discounted sum of dividends. As a result, learning about price behavior affects market outcomes, while learning about the discounted sum of dividends is irrelevant for equilibrium prices. Stock prices equal the discounted sum of dividends only after making very strong assumptions about agents? market knowledge.     

MARKET EFFICIENCY: EVIDENCE FROM A NO-BUBBLE ASSET MARKET EXPERIMENT

Abstract.  We report the results of an experiment that demonstrates that market experience is not necessary to eliminate bubbles in the type of asset markets studied in Smith et al . (1988) . We introduce a pre-market phase in which subjects experience a dividend flow themselves by literally observing and receiving dividends for 12 periods. The robust bubble–crash phenomenon never occurs in our experiment. Our results provide strong evidence that so long as a majority of the subjects have full understanding of the structure of the dividend, market efficiency can be ensured.     

论投机性泡沫的内生性——基于一个模拟投机交易过程的经验模型

通过一个简约的模拟投机交易的经验模型,阐述了投机性泡沫是投机者对资产价格预期的一种自我实现①,它内生于投机者对资产价格进行无约束的套利交易过程中,其内在机制是交易数量的加速膨胀和预期的资产价格增长的相互作用。并据此认为政府管理部门首先应根据经济宏观和微观运行状况,结合资产的特点,为资产价格确立一个目标区域,并运用结构性的货币政策、延展交易资产的持有时间以及征收交易税等手段对资产价格进行有效管理,以防范投机性泡沫的形成和扩展。     

企业社会责任、现金股利与投资效率

本文选择我国2008-2016年沪深两市的A股上市公司作为研究样本,首先实证检验了企业承担社会责任对企业现金股利分配的影响。研究结果表明,社会责任表现越好的企业其更倾向于派发或连续派发现金股利,并且现金股利支付率越高。接下来本文对企业发放现金股利与投资效率的关系进行了研究。研究表明,企业发放现金股利通过减少企业的自由现金流抑制代理问题,缓解了自由现金流富余的企业的过度投资,连续派现向市场传递出的积极信号为企业带来新的融资,缓解了自由现金流紧缺的企业的投资不足。最后,本文进一步研究了企业社会责任在现金股利与投资效率的相关关系中发挥了何种调节作用,研究结果显示企业通过履行社会责任增加现金股利的发放,进而可以显著提高现金股利对过度投资的抑制作用。履行社会责任的企业更倾向于连续派现,从而提高了现金股利对投资不足的缓解程度。     

我国公司红利政策与股市波动

本文从实证的角度分析了中国上市公司的年度红利公告对股价及交易量的影响。我们发现 ,不论是首次分红还是一般的年度分红 ,现金股利所引起的股价异常收益显著小于股票股利和混合股利 (即现金和红股 )。此外 ,现金股利作为首次分红支付方式不受市场欢迎 ,其异常收益显著为负值。为了保证实证结果的纯净性 ,本文还进行了干扰排斥性检验 ,排除了除息除权日的溢出效应、大宗交易所引起的股价偏差及红利公告期间风险要素增加的影响。此研究回答了我国证券市场建立以来公司红利政策与市场价格及交易额的相关关系问题。