We estimate firms' implied cost of capital and examine the effects of dividend taxes on this ex ante measure. The results support the dividend tax capitalization hypothesis. We find a positive relation between implied cost of equity capital and dividend yield that is decreasing in aggregate...

Recent evidence and statements in Harris and Kemsley (1999) suggests that shareholder-level dividend taxes on retained earnings are fully impounded at the top statutory rate into stock prices. We re-examine these claims and results. Using the traditional definition of dividend tax...

This paper investigates for the identity of the ex-dividend date traders using the Finnish unique database that records the trades of all investors on the market. We find evidence of two investor groups trading around the ex-dividend date: domestic non-financial investors doing dividend...

We examine a type of distribution that is taxed as a capital gain rather than as a dividend. Since the distribution induces a realized capital gain while the price change on the ex-distribution day is an unrealized gain, ex-day return behavior provides evidence of the value of tax-timing capital...

This article offers a model that articulates how the capitalization of costs affects contemporaneous earnings and the growth path of expected earnings. It makes three points. First, reported earnings under successful efforts are more price-relevant than earnings under full costing or full...

How does the presence of a growth option affect expected earnings growth? This paper analyzes a firm with one growth option and an accrual accounting policy that, in the absence of a growth option, would equate accounting earnings to Hicksian earnings. Under this accounting policy, the presence...

We estimate firm level implied cost of equity capital based on recent advances in accounting and finance research and examine the effect of dividend taxes on the cost of equity capital. We investigate whether dividend taxes affect firms' cost of capital by testing the relation between the...

Harris and Kemsley (1999) suggest that shareholder-level dividend taxes on retained earnings are fully impounded into stock prices at the top statutory rate. Harris and Kemsley base their empirical tests on Ohlson (1995) with the addition of dividend taxes. We analyze Harris and Kemsley's...

The concept of residual income has become popular in recent years due, in part, to the Ohlson 1995 article on residual income valuation. Since Ohlson assumed clean surplus accounting in that article, the concept of residual income and clean surplus accounting have become intimately linked in the...

This paper investigates whether the tax disadvantage of dividends results in a relation between institutional portfolio allocations and dividend yield. I analyze the holdings of tax-exempt and taxable institutional investors. Controlling for size, performance, and risk, I find that taxable...