Dividends have long been perceived as a way for firms to reward investors. However, managers are likely to inflate return on equity (ROE) by paying out dividends because doing so reduces owners’ equity. We utilise performance-vesting equity incentive plans that adopt ROE as the performance...

The problem of determining the cost of equity is crucial to the development of organizations. It is an essential means of calculating value creation. The financial literature has proposed several models for estimating the cost of equity, such as the capital asset pricing model (CAPM). However,...