Payout policy and cash-flow uncertainty

The importance of cash-flow uncertainty in payout policy has received little attention in empirical studies, while survey studies such as [Lintner, J., 1956. Distribution of incomes of operations among dividends, retained earnings, and taxes. American Economic Review 46, 97–113.] and [Brav, A., Graham, J., Harvey C., Michaely, R., 2005. Payout policy in the 21st century. Journal of Financial Economics 77, 483–527.] indicate its importance. With worldwide firm-level data, we present evidence that cash-flow uncertainty is an important cross-sectional determinant of corporate payout policy. Our results show that across countries, cash-flow uncertainty, as proxied by stock return volatility, has a negative impact on the amount of dividends as well as the probability of paying dividends. The impact of cash-flow uncertainty on dividends is generally stronger than the impact of other potential determinants of payout policy—such as the earned/contributed capital mix, agency conflicts, and investment opportunities. We also find that the effect of cash-flow uncertainty on dividends is distinct from the effect of a firm's financial life-cycle stage.     

Payout policy in the 21st century

We survey 384 financial executives and conduct in-depth interviews with an additional 23 to determine the factors that drive dividend and share repurchase decisions. Our findings indicate that maintaining the dividend level is on par with investment decisions, while repurchases are made out of the residual cash flow after investment spending. Perceived stability of future earnings still affects dividend policy as in Lintner (1956. American Economic Review 46, 97–113). However, 50 years later, we find that the link between dividends and earnings has weakened. Many managers now favor repurchases because they are viewed as being more flexible than dividends and can be used in an attempt to time the equity market or to increase earnings per share. Executives believe that institutions are indifferent between dividends and repurchases and that payout policies have little impact on their investor clientele. In general, management views provide little support for agency, signaling, and clientele hypotheses of payout policy. Tax considerations play a secondary role.     

Dividend policy: A selective review of results from around the world

In a “perfect” market, Miller and Modigliani's celebrated dividend irrelevance argument holds, whereby a dividend payment or omission is identical in impact to changes in a firm's share structure. Consequently, the dividend payment itself is irrelevant to valuation; what matters is the firm's free cash flow. In the real world, the institutional and financial structure of markets matters. In the United States, explanations of actual dividend policy usually stress transaction costs, information costs engendering signaling and agency costs, taxes, and the legal system. Under the U.S. financial system many of these factors tend to be similar across firms, so that it can be difficult to disentangle their effects. However, it is to be expected that in a financial system organized differently results from the United States may not hold, so we may be able to identify the importance of factors largely suppressed in the United States. In this selective review we look at results from both comparative and international studies of dividend policy. As might be expected, we find that institutional structure—including a country's financial system, institutions, culture, and industrial organization—is important in determining dividend policy.     

Payout policy and the interaction of firm-level and country-level governance

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - For a panel of 1880 firms across 21 countries from 2004 to 2008, the impact of firm-level and country-level governance on payout policy is consistent...     

Payout policy in Brazil: Dividends versus interest on equity

We examine the impact of tax burden on cash distribution using a sample of Brazilian firms, which are allowed by law to distribute cash to shareholders in two forms: dividends and tax-advantaged interest on equity. The Brazilian institutional setting is superior to those used in prior studies that examine the choice between dividends and capital gains because, in some cases, dividends provide advantages that outweigh their negative tax consequences, leading firms to rationally choose payout policies that are not optimal when viewed only from the perspective of taxes. We find that taxes are a primary determinant of Brazilian firms’ payout policy decisions, as profitability and payout ratios (nonequity tax shields) are positively (negatively) related to the likelihood that a firm pays interest on equity. However, many firms continue to pay dividends despite the tax advantages of interest on equity payments. Abnormal returns around payout policy announcements suggest that these firms are, at least in part, catering to investor demand.     

Family entrepreneurship around the world

In many countries of the world, families participate in most activities of emerging and mature companies. For example, established business owners may co-own and/or co-manage their businesses with family members. The purpose of this study is to model entrepreneurial formation, innovation and growth, and the exit and continuity of businesses where family members participate in ownership, management, and labor. Based on a sample of over 28,000 businesses across 49 countries, I conclude the following. First, young family businesses tend to be sole proprietorships, domestically-oriented, focused on niche activities, and small. Second, international family businesses may be less innovative in products and markets than international non-family businesses. However, both types of businesses show a similar propensity to adopt new technologies. Third, a sequential model for business decisions shows that family involvement may accelerate future business creation and early start-up stages. However, family participation in ownership and labor may decrease the chances of transitioning from a nascent to a young business. Fourth, internationalization, future business prospects, and family involvement may make business operations more likely to continue after exiting.     

Explaining asymmetric volatility around the world

Based on the APARCH model and two outlier detection methods, we compute reliable time series of volatility asymmetry for 49 countries with relatively few observations. Results show a steady increase in the asymmetry over the years for most countries. We find that economic development and market capitalization/GDP are the most important factors that increase volatility asymmetry. We also find that higher participation of private investors and coverage by financial analysts increase the asymmetry, suggesting investor sentiment as a driving force. Leverage and feasibility of short selling increase volatility in falling market conditions, although only to a smaller extent.     

The flow-performance relationship around the world

We use a new dataset to study how mutual fund flows depend on past performance across 28 countries. We show that there are marked differences in the flow-performance relationship across countries, suggesting that US findings concerning its shape do not apply universally. We find that mutual fund investors sell losers more and buy winners less in more developed countries. This is because investors in more developed countries are more sophisticated and face lower costs of participating in the mutual fund industry. Higher country-level convexity is positively associated with higher levels of risk taking by fund managers.     

COVID-19, government policy responses,and stock market liquidity around the world: A note

Unprecedented non-pharmaceutical interventions targeted to curb the spread of COVID-19 exerted a dramatic impact on the global economy and financial markets. This study is the first attempt to investigate the influence of these government policy responses on global stock market liquidity. To this end, we examine daily data from 49 countries for the period January-April 2020. We demonstrate that the impact of the interventions is limited in scale and scope. Workplace and school closures deteriorate liquidity in emerging markets, while information campaigns on the novel coronavirus facilitate trading activity.     

Understanding commonality in liquidity around the world

We examine how commonality in liquidity varies across countries and over time in ways related to supply determinants (funding liquidity of financial intermediaries) and demand determinants (correlated trading behavior of international and institutional investors, incentives to trade individual securities, and investor sentiment) of liquidity. Commonality in liquidity is greater in countries with and during times of high market volatility (especially, large market declines), greater presence of international investors, and more correlated trading activity. Our evidence is more reliably consistent with demand-side explanations and challenges the ability of the funding liquidity hypothesis to help us understand important aspects of financial market liquidity around the world, even during the recent financial crisis.     

Payout policy,financial flexibility,and agency costs of free cash flow

This paper explains how firms choose between dividends and open-market repurchase programs, the prevailing method that firms use to disburse cash today. While earlier theories about payout policy are motivated by signaling, the motivation for payout in this paper is to prevent the waste of free cash by self-interested insiders. In the model, dividends prevent free cash waste by forcing cash out, but result in underinvestment if the cash paid out is later needed for operations. Open-market programs stimulate payout by providing personal gains to informed insiders that are associated with the firm's repurchase trade. Yet, they also avoid the underinvestment problem by leaving insiders the option to cancel the payout. Because their execution is optional, however, open-market programs only partially prevent the waste of free cash. The model provides testable predictions that are generally consistent with the empirical evidence.     

Payout policy, capital structure, and compensation contracts when managers value control

The optimal contract between managers and investors is endogenouslyderived when managers have preferences for both monetary compensationand corporate resources under their control. When the optimalpayout is privately known to managers, they can be induced tomake payouts by linking their compensation to the payout. Publicequity is a claim on this discretionary payout. If investorscan obtain new information about the firm's optimal payout level,it can be utilized by transferring the control from managementto investors. The new information allows the firm to achievea more efficient allocation through recontracting. We show thatthe new information will be obtained if and only if the payoutfalls below a promised level     

Payout policy,taxes, and the relation between returns and the bid–ask spread

Recent evidence demonstrates that corporate payout policy has shifted from the nearly exclusive use of dividend payout to the inclusion of stock repurchase, primarily through open markets. This trend has been attributed to the tax advantages associated with repurchase relative to dividends. In this paper, we introduce personal taxation and stock repurchase to reexamine the relation between returns and the bid–ask spread. Our model provides insight into the nature of this relation. Tests performed using NYSE, AMEX, and NASDAQ data provide empirical support of our theoretical conclusions. We conclude that the firm’s choice of payout policy influences the relation between returns and spreads.     

Payout policy and ownership structure: The case of Islamic and conventional banks

Using a sample of Islamic and conventional financial institutions domiciled in 16 countries for the period 2000–2015, we examine how ownership structure affects dividend policy. Our main findings indicate that ownership identity is important in explaining dividend policy in these banks, albeit in different patterns. In particular, the results suggest that government ownership seems to exert negative effects on dividend payouts in both types of banks, which is in line with the preference of governments towards bank stability. With respect to family ownership, the impact is negative for conventional banks but positive for Islamic ones, consistent with agency theory. These results are to some extent similar in the case of foreign ownership where it is associated with a higher payout policy in Islamic banks, but not significant in conventional ones. Our results are robust to an array of additional analyses including propensity score matching.     

National culture and corporate risk-taking around the world

This paper examines the effect of national culture on corporate risk-taking worldwide. Specifically, we focus on one particular cultural trait – Individualism – a culture dimension linked to risk-taking and overconfidence. Using a sample of 48 countries from 1998 to 2019 (a total of 111,697 firm-year observations), we document a positive relationship between Individualism and corporate risk-taking. This result is robust to potential endogeneity concerns, alternative default horizons, an alternative measure for corporate risk-taking, and alternative measures of Individualism.     

Liquidity risk and stock returns around the world

The recent global financial crisis demonstrates that market liquidity is a prominent systematic risk globally. We find that local liquidity risk, in addition to the local market, value and size factors, demands a systematic premium across stocks in 11 developed markets. This local pricing premium is smaller in countries where the country-level corporate boards are more effective and where there are less insider trading activities. We also discover that global liquidity risk is a significant pricing factor across all developed country market portfolios after controlling for global market, value, and size factors. The contribution of this risk to the return on a country market portfolio is economically and statistically significant within and across regions.     

国外有奖债券发行及借鉴思考

汶川地震后,用市场化手段建立巨灾融资体系的问题日益提上日程,文章通过对国外有奖债券的广泛搜集和整理,从政策和产品支持等方面介绍国外有奖债券发行的基本情况。并指出作为深受中小投资人欢迎,政府筹集中长期、低成本资金的重要融资工具,开发＂巨灾有奖债券＂,符合中央关于建立多层次巨灾融资体系的精神,有利于引导社会资金投入灾后重建。     

Corporate social responsibility and stakeholder governance around the world

In this paper, we examine the impact of stakeholder governance on corporate social responsibility (CSR) around the world to determine whether CSR is employed as a mechanism to mitigate conflicts of interest between managers and diverse stakeholders, or used as managerial perquisites. To examine this relation properly, we not only employ a large and extensive sample of international firms, but also control for endogeneity by using dynamic panel generalized method of moments (GMM), propensity score matching, and difference-in-difference approach. Our results suggest that stakeholder governance positively influences firms’ CSR engagement with a greater magnitude than board governance after controlling for endogeneity and other confounding factors of traditional corporate governance mechanisms, firm characteristics and national factors. Stakeholders’ influence in CSR engagement is more prevalent when investor protections and board governance are relatively weak.