This study addresses the debate over the relation between institutional ownership and dividend payout through the lens of the agency theory. We hypothesize that only institutional investors with certain traits are likely to monitor and conditioning on firms' financial performance, they will use...

Using firm-level union membership data for the period of 2002–2016, we show that firms with higher union membership are more likely to engage in real earnings management than accrual-based earnings management, with abnormal production as the dominant form of real earnings management. We...