We examine changes in firms' dividend payouts following an exogenous shock to the information asymmetry problem between managers and investors. Agency theories predict a decrease in dividend payments to the extent that improved public information lowers managers' need to convey their commitment...

We examine changes in firms' dividend payouts following an exogenous shock to the information asymmetry problem between managers and investors. Agency theories predict a decrease in dividend payments to the extent that improved public information lowers managers' need to convey their commitment...

We examine changes in firms' dividend payouts following an exogenous shock to the information asymmetry problem between managers and investors. Agency theories predict a decrease in dividend payments to the extent that improved public information lowers managers' need to convey their commitment...

We explore the link between open market share repurchases (OMRs) and asymmetric information - based on financial reporting quality - and find opaque firms experience positive abnormal returns twice the magnitude of transparent firms. These significant differences remain after controlling for...

Costs are sticky on average, that is, they fall less for sales decreases than they rise for equivalent sales increases. We examine the effect of this asymmetric cost behavior on a firm's dividend policy. Given investors’ aversion to dividend cuts, we predict that firms with higher resource...

The European Union (EU) has been debating for several years whether to change from the legal capital regime as regulated under the Second Company Law Directive to a solvency test regime as applied in the US, for example. Based on an analysis of direct compliance costs and capital maintenance...

Costs are sticky on average, i.e., they fall less for sales decreases than they rise for equivalent sales increases. We examine the effect of this asymmetric cost behavior on a firm's dividend policy. Given investors' aversion to dividend cuts, we predict that firms with higher resource...

This paper examines how the quality of firm information disclosure affects shareholders' use of dividends to mitigate agency problems. Managerial compensation is linked to firm value. However, because the manager and shareholders are asymmetrically informed, the manager can manipulate the firm's...

This paper surveys the literature on payout policy. We start out by discussing several stylized facts that are important to the development of any comprehensive payout policy framework. We then describe the Miller and Modigliani (1961) payout irrelevance proposition, and consider the effect of...

We examine how informational asymmetries affect firms' dividend policies. We find that firms that are more subject to information asymmetry are less likely to pay, initiate, or increase dividends, and disburse smaller amounts. We show that our main results are not driven by our sample, and that...