The interaction of corporate dividend policy and capital structure decisions under differential tax regimes

We develop a valuation model that integrates corporate capital structure and dividend payout policies. The resulting “extended” Miller (J Financ 32:261–297, 1977) model explicitly incorporates the different tax rates on corporate income, personal interest, dividends, and capital gains. We apply the model to ten different U.S. tax regimes since 1979 and generate several testable predictions. When the dividend tax rate exceeds the capital gains tax rate, dividend payout can partially offset value-enhancing effects of leverage. When the two rates are close, dividend payout loses its moderating influence. Using the S&P 1500 universe, we obtain empirical results that are consistent with the model’s predictions.     

The UK corporate tax reform and business investment decisions

The 1984 Finance Act made fundamental changes to the UK corporate tax system. Evidence from a detailed study of sixty past investment decisions is used to assess the likely effects of the shift from a high-tax, high-allowance system to a system of low taxes and allowances. This suggests that 100% allowances have had little impact on the scale of investment since 1979, reflecting limited taxable capacity and the importance of market considerations in investment decisions. Timing effects were more common, especially among small firms sampled. The post-tax cost of capital will fall for some firms but few appeared to use strict cost of capital criteria in assessing investments.     

The effects of tax and regulatory changes on commercial bank dividend policy

The literature concerning the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA) is extensive, but generally does not consider dividend policy changes related to TRA’s passage. One exception is Casey et al., but that work omits banking. An examination of banks is especially apt given TRA’s changes in tax rates and municipal bond categorization. Results show bank dividend policy to be different from other industries, as banks show no relation to past growth rates, beta, or an insider ownership as Rozeff’s model holds. The results support the idea that the lower the taxes, the higher the payout which is contrary to the dividend irrelevancy argument. However, the results are not robust in tests using data from a later period meant to more closely examine changing capitalization requirements’ impact on dividend policy.     

The effects of taxes and dividend policy on capital accumulation and macroeconomic behavior

This paper analyzes the macrodynamic effects of changes in various tax rates in an intertemporal optimizing framework. Two aspects emphasized include the role of dividend policy and the behavior of the stock market. Both permanent and temporary tax changes are considered, with the transitional adjustment paths being characterized in detail. The contrast between the short-run and long-run effects is highlighted. In particular, an increase in any of the tax rates will cause short-run employment to fall, and with the capital stock fixed instantaneously, the capital-labor ratio immediately rises. Over time, as the capital stock declines, the capital-labor ratio falls.     

Deregulation of short selling and corporate cash dividend policy: A quasi-natural experiment from China

This study takes China’s short selling deregulation as a quasi-natural experiment, employs a sample of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2007 to 2017, and tests the impact of a short selling pilot on firms’ cash dividends using a difference-in-differences model (DID). We find that China’s short selling pilot significantly increases the pilot firms’ cash dividends. The mechanism test shows that short selling can improve the pilot firms’ cash dividends by playing a corporate governance role to restrain dual agency costs such as management fees and major shareholders’ tunneling. Furthermore, we identify that short selling restrains the behavior of “large stock dividends” and increases the cash dividends of “large stock dividends” firms. Moreover, the governance effect of short selling is complementary to the external governance environment. The higher the degree of marketization and government quality, the more significant the governance effect of short selling to increase the pilot firms’ cash dividends. This study enriches not only the research related to cash dividends in emerging economies, but also provides new empirical evidence for the evaluation of China’s short selling deregulation and offers valuable lessons to other emerging economies.     

Investment and capital structure decisions with strategic debt service under asymmetric information

This paper examines the agency problem due to manager-shareholder conflicts in a real option framework by incorporating strategic debt service. We show that when the equityholders’ bargaining power is weak, the optimal coupon is larger and the manager overinvests the project relative to the case without renegotiation, while the results are totally opposite when the bargaining power is strong. An increase in equityholders’ bargaining power reduces the manager’s value and the total social value. Especially, the social value can be improved by debt renegotiation when the systematic risk is high, which provides an explanation why Chinese government encourage the market-oriented debt restructuring.     

资本结构对企业市场竞争力的影响

本文通过系统分析资本结构对企业市场竞争力的影响,认为企业资本结构的选择不仅会影响到本企业的财务状况,而且会影响到本企业在产品市场中的销售份额、竞争地位和生存发展能力,这导致企业实际选择的负债程度大大低于传统的财务理论所预测的最优负债比例.     

The endogeneity bias in the relation between cost-of-debt capital and corporate disclosure policy

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we provide a discussion of the problems associated with endogeneity in empirical accounting research. We emphasize problems arising when endogeneity is caused by (1) unobservable firm-specific factors and (2) omitted variables, and discuss the merits and drawbacks of using panel data techniques to address these causes. Second, we investigate the magnitude of endogeneity bias in Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regressions of cost-of-debt capital on firm disclosure policy. We document how including a set of variables which theory suggests to be related with both cost-of-debt capital and disclosure and using fixed effects estimation in a panel data-set reduces the endogeneity bias and produces consistent results. This analysis reveals that the effect of disclosure policy on cost-of-debt capital is 200% higher than what is found in OLS estimation. Finally, we provide direct evidence that disclosure is impacted by unobservable firm-specific factors that are also correlated with cost of capital.     

外资企业避税与反避税:税收法律制度的完善与调整

目前 ,外资企业避税的方式呈现出以下新特征 :通过关联企业间提供中介服务如咨询费、租赁费、逆向避税等方式进行。对这种更为隐蔽的避税行为 ,我国的税收法律制度显得无奈与尴尬 ,缺乏反避税的正式约束规则。必须完善反避税的相关法律制度 ,制订统一的反避税条款 ,建立反避税机构体系。     

The effects of inflationary finance on tax revenue under progressive tax regimes: An application to turkey, 1963–1982

The revenue from inflationary finance of government expenditures is enhanced because of the phenomenon of bracket-creep. Bracket-creep occurs in progressive tax systems because inflation pushes tax payers into higher tax brackets and thus increases the real tax revenue. In highly inflationary economies, the implicit revenue gain due to bracket-creep can be a significant source of revenue to the government. In the case of Turkey in 1963–1982, we find that government appropriated significant revenue due to bracket-creep, in addition to the revenue from inflationary finance.     

The impact of corporate strategy on the capital structure of Australian companies

Research into the capital structure of firms has been the subject of extensive empirical investigation but further progress may be constrained by the conventional paradigm underlying most of this work. This paper seeks to extend the debate by examining the endogenous influence of corporate strategy on financing decisions made by firms. While the theoretical specification of the possible relationship has to be developed further, various models were constructed and company data from Australia, an economy with some notoriety for fairly loose corporate debt management, was used to examine various hypothesized relationships. Our analysis suggests that corporate strategy influences capital structure, particularly for the most diversified firms, and that the emerging relationship is complex. Profit, cash flow, the rate of growth and the level of earnings risk are important additional internal influences on capital structure. The results are reasonably robust and indicate that this focus of enquiry has considerable potential for further resolution of the capital structure puzzle, as well as contributing to the debate on the impact of institutional shareholders on the corporate strategy of the firms in which they invest.     

The analysis of corporate governance policy and corporate financial performance

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the quality of corporate governance policy and the firm financial performance and. Data were collected from Corporate Library. A sample of 3,068 firms from the database of 2010 Corporate Library was analyzed. Logistic regression models were employed and SPSS statistical package was utilized to perform the analysis. Our results show that when firms have better corporate governance policies, they are more likely to perform better. Specifically, when firms have a better board rating, compensation policy, takeover defense strategy, accounting practice, and a formal governance policy, they are more likely to perform better than their counterparts without such quality corporate governance policies.     

Monetary policy regimes and the term structure of interest rates

US monetary policy is investigated using a regime-switching no-arbitrage term structure model that relies on inflation, output, and the short interest rate as factors. The model is complemented with a set of assumptions that allow the dynamics of the private sector to be separated from monetary policy. The monetary policy regimes cannot be estimated if the yield curve is ignored during estimation. Counterfactual analysis evaluates importance of regimes in policy and shocks for the great moderation. The low-volatility regime of exogenous shocks plays an important role. Monetary policy contributes by trading off asymmetric responses of output and inflation under different regimes.     

Economic policy uncertainty and capital structure choice: Evidence from China

This paper studies how economic policy uncertainty affects corporate capital structure for Chinese listed firms from 2003 to 2013. We show that as the degree of economic policy uncertainty increases, firms tend to lower their leverage ratios. However, firms that are from regions with lower degrees of marketization, are state-owned or have prior bank-firm relationships mitigate the negative effect of policy uncertainty. Moreover, we provide consistent evidence that this negative effect is sourced from the deterioration of the external financing environment. We also find that firms adjust their financing structures by using more trade credit when economic policy uncertainty increases. Our results are robust to sample selection, data frequency, model specification and endogeneity.     

Using ex-day returns to separate the tax and information effects of dividend changes

In this paper, the information content of dividends is tested by examining the abnormal return on the announcement date. To address the potentially confounding effects of the tax penalty, the abnormal exdividend day return is used to separate stocks for which dividends impose a tax penalty on marginal investors from stocks for which dividends provide a tax benefit to marginal investors. This separation uncovers results that support the information content hypothesis; dividend increases result in positive abnormal announcement day returns even for stocks whose marginal investors are averse to dividends.     

Corporate growth,corporate strategy,and the choice of capital structure

The interaction between a firm's strategic decisions and its financial policies has become an increasingly frequent topic in the managerial economics literature. We examine here a dimension of that interaction that has not previously been addressed, and suggest a new framework for defining the manner in which choices of strategy and choices of capital structure might be jointly determined, in an environment where upward pressures on factor costs and product prices are the norm.     

Corporate tax avoidance and corporate financialization: The moderating effect of managerial myopia

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether managers with tax avoidance motivation also engage in corporate financialization. Using a large sample of Chinese A-share non-financial listed firms from 2009 to 2020, the empirical results show that there is a positive association between corporate tax avoidance and corporate financialization. Moreover, the positive effect of tax avoidance on corporate financialization mainly manifests in firms with myopic managers. Our results are robust to alternative measures of both tax avoidance and managerial myopia. Two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression and propensity score matching (PSM) confirm our results and mitigate any potential endogeneity issues. Overall, we show that the agency costs between shareholders and managers indeed play a critical role between tax avoidance and corporate financialization.     

Information content of unexpected dividends under a semi-mandatory dividend policy: An empirical study of China

We examine the information content of unexpected dividend changes under China’s unique semi-mandatory dividend policy, which requires firms to pay a minimum amount of cash dividends before they can undertake seasoned equity offerings (SEO). The cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) are significantly positive in response to unexpected dividend increase for non-SEO firms, but they are not significantly different from zero for SEO firms. For non-SEO firms, there is a significant positive relation between future earnings and unexpected dividend increases, but the relation is not significant for SEO firms. However, when considering additional refinancing costs for SEO firms caused by the mandatory dividend policy, higher dividend payments are associated with lower future earnings. Overall, our findings are consistent with both the dividend signaling theory and the negative effects of SEOs on a firm’s value.     

The design of capital budgeting processes and the corporate context

This study investigates how differences in the degree of capital budgeting sophistication and formalization are related to the corporate context. A model was developed and the expectations in the model were explored with data gathered from 146 major UK firms. The results generally support the model and show that the investment procedures and techniques adopted by firms may be partly explained in terms of the corporate context.     

Multidivisional structure and capital structure: The contingency of diversification strategy

This study examines the relationship between the implementation of the multidivisional (M-form) organizational structure, capital structure and diversification strategy. Findings indicate that implementation of the M-form structure from a hierarchical (U-form) structure is associated with a general increase in the long-term debt-to-equity ratio for all firms, a result that supports a free-cash-flow argument for the use of debt in restructuring to reduce the opportunism of management. Further, as implied by arguments from transaction cost economics, the debt-to-equity ration differs for different types of diversification strategy.