Australian Tax Changes and Dividend Reinvestment Announcement Effects: A Pre- and Post-Imputation Study

This paper used an event study approach to examine the impact of dividend reinvestment plans on shareholders returns in the pre- and post-imputation environment. The daily share return behaviour indicated that the announcement to introduce DRP was received indifferntly by the market prior to the imputation, but was valued positively afterwards. The results support the suggestion that under imputation the optimal dividend policy is to distribute the maximum franked dividend and implement a DRP to retain cashflows.