Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the dividend payments and share repurchases of dual-class firms that have both their superior voting shares and inferior voting shares publicly traded. Design/methodology/approach: This paper uses matched dual-class and single-class samples from...

This paper provides empirical evidence showing that dual-class firms use dividend payments to mitigate agency problems while using repurchases of superior shares to maintain the private benefits of control. With a sample of dual-class firms from 1994 to 2015 that have both their superior voting...