The lock-in effect and the corporate payout puzzle

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 to demonstrate that tax deferment can also provide a partial solution to the payout puzzle: if shareholders demand repurchase premiums when selling equity back to a firm - as compensation for accelerated realizations - then dividend payments can become tax-efficient. This mechanism is appealing because it jointly explains a number of payout regularities without appealing to asymmetric information, incomplete contracting, repurchase constraints, and/or shareholder irrationality.