We analyze the short and long-run performance of firms that were differentially affected by a new tax on dividends in the lead-up to the Global Financial Crisis. We use exogenous policy variation for firms with different legal statuses and financial year-end dates to causally identify the...

Firms avail themselves of external finance to manage obligations to pay dividends, along with other commitments. Indian firms, which have significant ownership concentration, present a unique opportunity for analyzing the influence of promoter holding on financed dividend payouts. This study...

The past two decades have witnessed a sharp surge in corporate equity payout. The annual net equity payout of non-financial public companies in the U.S. averaged $525 billion (in 2010 dollars) per year from 2004 to 2019, compared to only $141 billion during the prior 17-year period. Using...

We use matched firm-worker panel data from France and Norway to consider observationally equivalent alternatives to the hypothesis that firms share product market rents with their workers in the form of higher wages. After documenting the main stylized facts, we find that neither the main...

We study the effect of ambiguity — Knightian uncertainty — on payout policy. We find that firm-level ambiguity increases and accelerates payout, via both dividends and share repurchases. This positive effect of ambiguity is distinct from the known negative effect of risk on payout policy....

This paper examines the effect of relationship duration with major customer on supplier's payout policies. I find that firm which remains the relation with major customer in a longer period pays higher dividend. This finding is unbiased by the substitutional effect between dividend and...

We study the role of state controlling shareholders in corporate payout policy. We exploit as an exogenous event the State Capital Operation Program in China under which parent central state-owned enterprises (parent CSOEs) are required to partially contribute their income to a fiscal fund. We...

Consistent with the notion that dividends are very sticky, Daniel, Denis, and Naveen (2008) report evidence that firms manage earnings upward when pre-managed earnings are expected to fall short of dividend payments. However, we find that this evidence is not robust when controlling for firms'...

This paper focuses on dominant owners' use of leverage to finance their blockholdings and its relationship to dividend policy. We postulate that blockholder leverage may impact payout policy, in particular when earnings are hit by a negative shock. We use panel data for France where blockholders...

This paper focuses on dominant owners' use of leverage to finance their blockholdings and its relationship to dividend policy. We postulate that blockholder leverage may impact payout policy, in particular when earnings are hit by a negative shock. We use panel data for France where blockholders...

This paper examines the relationship between employment protection legislation (EPL) and corporate payouts. Employees are corporate claimants who compete with shareholders to extract economic rents generated by the firm, so management is influenced by workforce power via the EPL framework in...

The paper surveys the recent literature on the fiscal implications of central bank balance sheets, with a special focus on political economy issues. It then presents the results of simulations that describe the effects of different scenarios for the Federal Reserve's longer-run balance sheet on...

This paper investigates whether a country's level of financial development is associated with earnings management in an international setting. Financial development is likely to heighten the monitoring and scrutiny of accounting numbers because of strengthened investor protection laws and...

The paper surveys the recent literature on the fiscal implications of central bank balance sheets, with a special focus on political economy issues. It then presents the results of simulations that describe the effects of different scenarios for the Federal Reserve's longer-run balance sheet on...

The paper surveys the recent literature on the fiscal implications of central bank balance sheets, with a special focus on political economy issues. It then presents the results of simulations that describe the effects of different scenarios for the Federal Reserve's longer-run balance sheet on...

This paper investigates an effect of investor awareness on the firm payout policy. I derive a novel proxy of investor recognition using data on firm locations from the 10-K filings. I obtain Google Search Volume Index (SVI) at the firm-state level and find that this well-known measure of...

This paper provides a comparative summary of the payout phase of pension systems in five countries -- Australia, Chile, Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland. All five countries have large pension systems with mandatory or quasi-mandatory retirement savings schemes. But they exhibit important...

An accelerated share repurchase (ASR) allows a firm to repurchase a significant portion of its shares immediately, while shifting the burden of reducing the impact and uncertainty in the trade to an intermediary. The intermediary must then purchase the shares from the market over several days,...

This paper studies the payout policy of Italian firms controlled by large majority shareholders (controlled firms). The paper reports that a firm's share of dividends in total payout (dividends plus repurchases) is negatively related to the size of the cash flow stake of the firm's controlling...

The paper surveys the recent literature on the fiscal implications of central bank balance sheets, with a special focus on political economy issues. It then presents the results of simulations that describe the effects of different scenarios for the Federal Reserve's longer-run balance sheet on...

I investigate the effects of firms' proportion of fixed and variable costs on their payout policy. The investigation finds that firms with higher fixed costs pay a lower fraction of their operating income in dividends and share repurchases. Further, these firms return a higher fraction of their...

The objective of this paper is to ascertain whether Islamic banks do in fact manage profit distributions and if so, what factors are associated with the extent of profit distribution management. The results suggest that most Islamic banks manage profit distributions, with the extent of profit...

This paper provides empirical evidence showing that dual-class firms use dividend payments to mitigate agency problems while using repurchases of superior shares to maintain the private benefits of control. With a sample of dual-class firms from 1994 to 2015 that have both their superior voting...

The paper analyzes the efficiency costs of dividend taxation in an effort-based corporate agency model in which non-verifiable managerial effort enhances taxable profits. We show that investment changes following a rise in dividend taxes might not be sufficient to infer the efficiency cost of...

The paper analyzes the efficiency costs of dividend taxation in an effort-based corporate agency model in which non-verifiable managerial effort enhances taxable profits. We show that investment changes following a rise in dividend taxes might not be sufficient to infer the efficiency cost of...