This paper offers a new mathematical formulation that addresses the relationship between expected price-to-book ratio, dividend per share, dividend payout ratio, systematic and unsystematic risks. The sample includes the non-financial firms in the DJIA covering the period 1997-2006. The general results show that the expected price-to-book ratios are: (a) positively associated with the expected ...

We compare the dividend policies of privatelyand publicly-held firms in order to examine Lintner’s (1956) model of dividends, as wells as more recent agency-based and informationbased explanations of observed dividend behavior. Our findings suggest that both public and private firms exhibit a strong aversion to dividend cuts and omissions; however, public firms adhere to a consistent policy of ...

We examine how corporate payout policy is affected by managerial stock incentives using data on more than 1100 nonfinancial firms during 1993-97. We find that management share ownership encourages higher payouts by firms with potentially the greatest agency problems—those with low market-to-book ratios and low management stock ownership. We also find that management stock options change the com...

Financial regulation imposes equity buffers on banks by restricting dividends. This paper studies constrained-efficient dividend policy when fund loans with and debt. In the model, bank shareholders consider costly a bank’s access to debt depends its shareholder value. response loan losses cut dividends, but eventually defer dividends too much. They do not internalize that commitment higher (an...

For a general class of risk models, the dividends-penalty identity is derived by probabilistic reasoning. This identity is the key for understanding and determining the optimal dividend barrier, which maximizes the difference between the expected present value of all dividends until ruin and the expected discounted value of a penalty at ruin (which is typically a function of the deficit at ruin...

Dividend smoothing remains a puzzle for …nancial economists. We present a model in which smoothing of dividends arises as an equilibrium outcome. A manager who cares about the intrinsic value of the …rm as well as its current stock price has to decide how to allocate earnings between investments and dividends. Since the stock price is determined by uninformed investors, the manager has an incen...