Our analysis finds that despite the growing number, the majority of savings banks currently do not make any payouts. Furthermore, savings banks distribute only a small part of their net profit to the shareholders. This means that they can still build up capital even if they make payouts. Savings...

Baker (2002) has demonstrated theoretically that the quality of performance measures used in compensation contracts hinges on two characteristics: noise and distortion. These criteria, though, will only be useful in practice as long as the noise and distortion of a performance measure can be...

Classical corporation tax entails double taxation of corporate income. The alternative practice to impute corporation tax to the domestic recipients of dividends is shown, in the case of a company with international owners, effectively to convert the imputation system back to a classical...

We show that enhanced stock liquidity increases a firm’s propensity to hold cash using tick-size decimalization for identification. Our finding is surprising in light of the view that improved stock liquidity reduces financial constraints. As an explanation, we propose that there is a...

Taxes on capital gains are deferred until realization, whereas dividend taxes are levied upon accrual. This often makes dividends tax-disadvantaged relative to share repurchases, which leads to the payout puzzle: why do firms pay dividends? This paper develops a model of corporate payout policy...

Absent theoretical guidance, empiricists have been forced to rely upon numerical comparative statics from constant tax rate models in formulating testable implications of tradeoff theory in the context of natural experiments. We fill the theoretical void by solving in closed-form a dynamic...

Prior to 2018, U.S. repatriation taxes motivated companies to retain cash offshore. Using confidential jurisdiction-specific data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, we find that firms with high tax-induced foreign cash have approximately 3.3 percent higher domestic liabilities relative to...

The paper investigates the effectiveness of dividend-based macroprudential rules in complementing capital requirements to promote bank soundness and sustained lending over the cycle. First, some evidence on bank dividends and earnings in the euro area is presented. When shocks hit their profits,...

Dividend payment policy is a significant issue of neoclassical theories of finance. One of the concepts which poses a challenge to the neoclassical approach to dividend payment policy is behavioural finance, including a catering theory of dividends. The aim of the article is to examine whether...

We examine the nature of information contained in insider trades prior to corporate events. Insiders' net buying increases before open market share repurchase announcements and decreases before seasoned equity offers. Higher insider net buying is associated with better post-event operating...