We examine the role of institutional investors' investment horizon on the information content associated with dividend announcement surprises in the “dividend-reappearance era”. We find that the presence of institutional investors negatively affects the announcement period cumulative...

We propose a novel approach to measure the value that shareholders assign to financial flexibility. In contrast to existing proxies for financial constraints, our measure is market-based, forward-looking and not directly influenced by past financial decisions. We find that firms for which...

We posit that firms use dividend payout policy to reduce information asymmetry and agency costs caused by country-level institutional weaknesses. Firms operating in countries with weak insider trading laws attempt to mitigate this institutional weakness by committing themselves to paying out...

This study examines the extent to which agency-based models and asymmetric information theories explain dividend smoothing around the world. Tests on a cross-section of more than two thousand firms from twenty-four countries show that managers of firms with low market-to-book ratios and less...

What is the impact of long-term executive compensation, particularly large pension payouts, on the firm's current dividend policy? We argue that managers with high pension holdings are less likely to adopt a high dividend policy that can risk their future pension payouts. Using a hand-collected...

As an alternative version of the side-payment model, this paper presents a demonstration of how the necessity of winning majority support of shareholders influences the relation between a blockholder's monitoring incentive and a firm's dividend policy. When dividend-averse individuals...

We examine the effects of executive compensation and investor protection on payout policy in Europe. We find a negative (positive) relationship between both option and restricted stock compensation and dividends (repurchases). However, when the incentive compensation is dividend protected,...

We examine corporate payout policy in dual-class firms. The expropriation hypothesis predicts that dual-class firms pay out less to shareholders because entrenched managers want to maximize the value of assets under control and the associated private benefits. The pre-commitment hypothesis...

Consistent with the predictions of Brennan and Thakor's (1990) model of shareholder preferences, we find that, on average, institutional shareholders are net sellers during share repurchases. After controlling for liquidity provision and characteristics investing, we find that a one standard...

This paper uses a dynamic partial equilibrium model to explain a puzzle of dividend smoothing. In contrast to the Modigliani–Miller theory, I show that firm value depends on payout policy. The analysis implies that firms with more stable dividend stream are more valuable. This explains why...