Earnings,dividend policy,and present value relations: Building blocks of dividend policy invariant cash flows

In a Modigliani-Miller world, dividend policy is irrelevant for asset pricing. This article searches for cash flows with two characteristics: like dividends, asset prices can be calculated from their present values and, unlike dividends, they are invariant with respect to changes in dividend policy. Segmented and aggregate residual income measures with these features are identified under two assumptions: dividend policy does not alter risk premiums and income earned from investments associated with dividend policy includes unrealized capital gains and losses. The results hold for otherwise arbitrary risk premiums in the general no-arbitrage approach to the valuation of uncertain income streams.     

Signaling and the Valuation of Unseasoned New Issues

This paper is an empirical examination of the relation between firm value and two potential actions by entrepreneurs attempting to signal to investors information about otherwise unobservable firm features. The signals investigated are the proportion of equity ownership retained by entrepreneurs and the dividend policy of the firm; both signals are hypothesized to be positively related to firm value. Using a sample of unseasoned new equity issues, the empirical results are consistent with the entrepreneurial ownership retention hypothesis, but the dividend signaling hypothesis is rejected.     

企业股利政策与财务风险分析

股利政策是企业决定对其盈余进行分配的方案选择，股利政策的实行会给企业的生产经营带来一些有利的影响，同样也会给企业带来一定的财务风险。本将评述两种主要的股利理论，分析股利政策与企业财务风险之间的关系，并就我国上市公司股利政策的现状进行分析，阐述其原因以及其中存在的财务风险。     

Carbon risk and dividend policy: Evidence from China

Using a large sample of Chinese listed industrial firms from 2009 to 2019, this study investigates the effect of firm-level carbon risk on dividend policy. We find that carbon risk has a significant and negative impact on a firm's dividend payout level. We also find that when firms' capability in innovation is stronger, the degree of earnings uncertainty is higher, a firm belongs to high‑carbon industries, the negative relationship between carbon risk and dividend payout level is more significant. Furthermore, financial constraints and cash holdings are two underlying channels through which carbon risk affects cash dividend payouts. Our findings remain consistent across several robustness checks.     

Dividend Stability, Dividend Yield and Stock Returns: UK Evidence

This paper establishes an empirical role for two measures of dividend stability (as a proxy for dividend policy) in explaining UK stock returns. There is little systematic empirical evidence concerning the relation between dividend stability, dividend yield and stock returns despite the fact that a variety of theoretical models point to dividend policy as an important stock attribute. Here we construct two definitions of dividend stability, one of which involves dividend cuts, and use a sample of all listed UK firms from 1975 to 1997 to explore the relationship between stock returns and a variety of characteristics, including dividend stability. We find an inverse correlation between the stability of past dividend policy and systematic risk. Both stability measures have explanatory power over returns, but this is concentrated in January.     

Dividend Stability, Dividend Yield and Stock Returns: UK Evidence

This paper establishes an empirical role for two measures of dividend stability (as a proxy for dividend policy) in explaining UK stock returns. There is little systematic empirical evidence concerning the relation between dividend stability, dividend yield and stock returns despite the fact that a variety of theoretical models point to dividend policy as an important stock attribute. Here we construct two definitions of dividend stability, one of which involves dividend cuts, and use a sample of all listed UK firms from 1975 to 1997 to explore the relationship between stock returns and a variety of characteristics, including dividend stability. We find an inverse correlation between the stability of past dividend policy and systematic risk. Both stability measures have explanatory power over returns, but this is concentrated in January.     

Local Culture and Dividends

I empirically investigate whether geographical variations in local culture, as proxied by local religion, affect dividend demand and corporate dividend policy for a large sample of US firms. Firms located in Protestant counties are more likely to be dividend payers, initiate dividends, and have higher dividend yields, while firms located in Catholic counties are less likely to be dividend payers and have lower dividend yields. There is a geographically varying dividend clientele effect consistent with the variations in risk aversion among different cultural groups. My results suggest that firms largely held by local investors determine their corporate policies in line with local culture.     

What drives the disappearing dividends phenomenon?

We study the determinants of dividend payout policy and examine the role of liquidity, risk and catering in explaining the changes in propensity to pay. Our results indicate that risk plays a major role in firms’ dividend policy. The evidence substantiates from a large sample of firms representing 18 countries over the sample period from 1989 to 2011. For firms in the US, France, UK and Other European markets, liquidity is additionally an important determinant of dividend policy. We find that, although catering incentives persist only among firms in common law countries and not in civil law countries, after adjusting for risk there is little support for catering theory even among firms incorporated in common law countries. Our results indicate that catering incentives reflect the risk-reward relationship in the changing propensity to pay dividends.     

Dividend policy in Nordic listed firms

In this paper we analyze the results from a survey among all publicly listed Nordic firms on their dividend payout policy. The results show that 72% of the Nordic companies have a specified dividend policy. Larger and more profitable companies are more likely to have a defined dividend policy in place. The dividend policy is mostly influenced by capital structure considerations and the outlook of future earnings. We also find that the likelihood for a firm having an explicit dividend policy is positively related to ownership concentration as well as to the presence of large long-term private or industrial owners. Our results support the use of defined dividend policies for agency or monitoring reasons rather than signaling reasons.     

Managerial Ownership and Agency Conflicts: A Nonlinear Simultaneous Equation Analysis of Managerial Ownership, Risk Taking, Debt Policy, and Dividend Policy

This paper uses a nonlinear simultaneous equation methodology to examine how managerial ownership relates to risk taking, debt policy, and dividend policy. The results have implications for our understanding of agency costs. We find risk to be a significant and positive determinant of the level of managerial ownership while managerial ownership is also a significant and positive determinant of the level of risk. The result supports the argument that managerial ownership helps to resolve the agency conflicts between external stockholders and managers but at the expense of exacerbating the agency conflict between stockholders and bondholders. We further observe evidence of substitution-monitoring effects between managerial ownership and debt policy, between managerial ownership and dividend policy, and between managerial ownership and institutional ownership.     

基于资产专用性视角的股利政策研究评述与启示

已有的股利政策研究都是建立在资产同质的前提之下,并没有关注资产异质带来的专用性影响,考虑到目前企业资产的专用性投资已经成为企业普遍拥有的特征之一,本文在对近年来国内外关于股利政策以及资产专用性的主要研究成果进行系统的评述与分析的基础上,提出了公司在制定股利政策的时候有必要将公司资产投资的专用性特点纳入考虑范围的观点,以期为我国学术界对股利政策相关理论和实证研究提供一个崭新的视角,同时推动我国上市公司在制定股利政策时做出符合自身资产专用性状况的决策。     

创业板上市公司股利分配研究

本文以截止2010年4月30日79家创业板上市公司为对象,以实证分析的方法研究创业板上市公司股利分配。结论显示,创业板上市公司股利分配与第一大股东持股比例之间没有显著关系;公司成长性对现金股利发放水平有抑制作用;公司盈利能力、货币资金充足率及盈余积累水平对公司现金股利分配水平有显著影响。本文的研究表明,创业板公司股利分配行为不支持股利迎合假说及利益输送假说,公司股利分配在一定程度上反映了公司的组织结构特征。     

不同收益水平上盈余信息与股利政策的交互关系研究

以沪深上市公司为样本,检验盈余信息和股利政策在不同收益上的解释作用,并深入研究盈余信息分别与现金股利、股票股利和多种分配方案等三个层面的股利政策的交互关系。结果表明:在大多数收益水平上,盈余信息和股利政策显著影响市场收益水平,而且二者之间存在显著的交互关系。具体而言,现金股利变化与盈余变化在不同收益水平上具有不同的交互影响;而股票股利与盈余信息的交互影响在各收益水平上均不十分突出;多种分配方案中的"综合政策"与盈余变动在各收益水平上表现出较大的正向交互影响。     

Taxes and dividend policy under alternative tax regimes

This paper examines changes in corporate dividend policy around the introduction of a dividend imputation tax system. This represented a significant change to the Australian tax framework and allows us to test the effect of differential taxation on corporate dividend policy. Consistent with the tax preference for the distribution of dividends, we find dividend initiations, all dividend payout measures and dividend reinvestment plans increased with the introduction of dividend imputation. Similarly we find that gross dividend payouts are more volatile under dividend imputation. Finally, we find that the increase in dividend payout and initiations differs across firms. In particular, we find that the higher the level of available franking tax credits the higher the firm's gross dividend payout and the more likely the firm is to initiate a dividend.     

Corporate risk management and dividend signaling theory

This article investigates the effect of corporate risk management on dividend policy. We extend the signaling framework of Bhattacharya [1979. Bell Journal of Economics 10, 259–270] by including the possibility of hedging the future cash flow. We find that the higher the hedging level, the lower the incremental dividend. This result is intuitive. It is in line with studies suggesting that cash flows’ predictability decreases the marginal gain from costly signaling through dividends and the assertion that corporate hedging decreases cash flow volatility. It is also in line with the purported positive relation between information asymmetry and dividend policy (e.g., Miller and Rock [1985. The Journal of Finance 40, 1031–1051]) and the assertion that risk management alleviates the information asymmetry problem (e.g., DaDalt et al. [2002. The Journal of Future Markets 22, 261–267]). Our theoretical model has testable implications.     

Optimal payout ratio under uncertainty and the flexibility hypothesis: Theory and empirical evidence

Following the dividend flexibility hypothesis used by DeAngelo and DeAngelo (2006), Blau and Fuller (2008), and others, we theoretically extend the proposition of DeAngelo and DeAngelo (2006) optimal payout policy in terms of the flexibility dividend hypothesis. In addition, we also introduce growth rate, systematic risk, and total risk variables into the theoretical model.To test the theoretical results derived in this paper, we use the data collected in the US from 1969 to 2009 to investigate the impact of the growth rate, systematic risk, and total risk on the optimal payout ratio in terms of the fixed-effect model. We find that based on flexibility considerations, a company will reduce its payout when the growth rate increases. In addition, we find that a nonlinear relationship exists between the payout ratio and the risk. In other words, the relationship between the payout ratio and the risk is negative (or positive) when the growth rate is higher (or lower) than the rate of return on total assets. Our theoretical model and empirical results can therefore be used to identify whether flexibility or the free cash flow hypothesis should be used to determine the dividend policy.     

Government Ownership and Dividend Policy: Evidence from Newly Privatised Firms

In this paper we examine the relationship between government ownership and dividend policy. Using a multinational sample of newly privatised firms from 43 countries, we find strong and robust evidence indicating that dividend payout is negatively related to government ownership, consistent with the predictions of agency theory. We also find that country‐level corporate governance affects the relationship between government ownership and dividend policy. Specifically, the adverse effects of government ownership on dividend policy are more pronounced in countries with weak law and order and a lower level of checks and balances. Our results are important, as they show that government ownership, as well as the institutional environment, does in fact affect the critical corporate policies, such as dividend policy, of newly privatised firms.