Firms that follow excessive payout policies (over-payers) are higher on the financial distress spectrum and have lower survival rates than under-payers. In addition, over-payers endure lower future sales and asset growth than under-payers and experience negative abnormal returns in the bond and...

We investigate how private information in stock prices impacts quarterly dividend changes. We find that the positive relationship between past returns and current dividend changes strengthens when returns convey more private information. This finding is robust to the use of several price...

This paper studies the payout policy of Italian firms controlled by large majority shareholders (controlled firms). The paper reports that a firm's share of dividends in total payout (dividends plus repurchases) is negatively related to the size of the cash flow stake of the firm's controlling...

We analyze the impact of market contestability on the payout policy of banks by exploiting plausibly exogenous changes in interstate geographical restrictions on branch expansion of banks. Leveraging branch-level data on bank deposits, we provide evidence of a negative impact of branching...