Portfolio diversification of firms' controlling owners influences their firms' capital investment. Empirically, the effect of owners' portfolio diversification on their firms' investment levels is positive for publicly-traded firms and tends to be negative for privately-held ones. These findings...

In early 2002, we surveyed 384 financial executives, to determine the factors that drive dividend and share repurchase decisions. Our survey was supplemented by in-depth interviews with an additional 23 executives. The survey consisted of 11 main questions, most with subparts - over 100...

While dividend smoothing is taken as an article of faith, little is known about the cross-sectional properties of smoothing policies. Why do some firms smooth more than others? We examine firms' dividend smoothing behavior across a wide spectrum of publicly traded firms in the U.S. We find that...