In a perfect capital market ex-dividend day share prices should fall by exactly the amount of the dividend. However, empirical evidence shows that stock prices drop by less than the dividend amount. The most popular explanations for this anomaly are tax or market microstructure related. We...

After a big post-2008 increase in the fraction of firms distributing cash in the U.S. -both as dividends and repurchases-, and the end of the increasing popularity of repurchases in other developed and emerging countries, the share of payers is no longer significantly lower in the U.S. than...