The purpose of this book is to review the theory and empirical evidence regarding the impact of dividend policy on shareholder wealth. It cuts to the quick of such long-standing questions as Why do corporations pay dividends? and Why should investors care? With relevant anecdotes, surveys,...

Abstract In this paper, we study the dynamics of initial public offerings (IPOs) by examining the tradeoff between an entrepreneur’s private benefits, which are lost whenever the firm is publicly traded, versus the advantages from diversification. We characterize the timing dimension of the...

The objective of this paper is to reexamine the effects of the timing of information releases on security prices. We extend Ross (1989) by allowing the timing of information releases to affect the martingale probabilities. We show that if the early release of information is expected to resolve...

Prior theoretical work on estimation risk generally has been restricted to single-period, returns-based models in which the investor must estimate the vector of expected returns but the covariance matrix is known. This paper extends the literature on parameter uncertainty in several ways. First,...

We provide a comprehensive empirical analysis of stock price behavior around the ex-dividend day in Japan. We find that prices rise on the ex-day and that dividend-related tax effects appear to be secondary. Returns around ex-dividend days are dominated by the proximity of many ex-days to the...