Out of their after-tax profits, corporations pay dividends and often repurchase shares to generate capital gains for their shareholders. Capital gains typically attract lower effective rates of tax than dividends, which leads to the payout puzzle: Why do corporations continue to pay dividends in spite of their relative tax disadvantage? This paper develops a model of corporate payout policy to ...

Adult age differences in cognitive plasticity have been studied less often in working memory than in episodic memory. The authors investigated the effects of extensive working memory practice on performance improvement, transfer, and short-term maintenance of practice gains and transfer effects. Adults age 20-30 years and 70-80 years practiced a spatial working memory task with 2 levels of proc...