1、 外文翻译 原文 Revisiting Managerial Perspectives on Dividend Policy Material Source: http:/ Author: GaryE.Powell One of the more puzzling issues in corporate finance involves dividends. Miller and Modigliani provide a compelling and widely accepted argument for dividend irrelevance in a world with perfec
2、t capital markets. Many years later, Miller recognized that the observed preference for cash dividends is one of the soft spots in the current body of theory. So why do corporations pay dividends, and why do investors care? Black once described this issue as a dividend “puzzle“ with “pieces that jus
3、t dont seem to fit.“ To help explain this puzzle, fmancial economists developed various theories-signaling, tax preference, agency costs, and bird-in-the-hand explanations. The profusion of theories led to observe, we have moved from a position of not enough good reasons to explain why dividends are
4、 paid to one of too many. “Advocates of behavioral finance, such as Stat man, introduced concepts such as prospect theory and mental accounting to explain why investors like dividends. Stat man contends that solving the dividend puzzle is impossible while ignoring the patterns of normal investor beh
5、avior. Today, corporate managers are left with a vast and often conflicting body of research about dividends. One way to enhance our understanding of why corporations pay dividends is to examine the views of managers who are responsible for making such decisions. Past fieldwork and surveys have prov
6、ided important insights into how managers determine their firms dividend payouts and their views about various dividend policy issues. For Example, Lintner conducted the seminal field study about the determination of dividend policy. Other researchers including Baker, Finally, and Edelman and Baker
7、and Powell surveyed managers to obtain their views about dividend policy. Such studies complement other types of empirical research on dividend policy. Our study examines how managers view dividend policy but uses a different data set to extend and refine the scope of previous survey research. Speci
8、fically, we survey corporate managers of Nasdaq firms that consistently pay cash dividends to determine their views about dividend policy, the relationship between dividend policy and value, and four common explanations for paying dividends-signaling, tax-preference, agency costs, and bird-in-the-ha
9、nd arguments. Our motivation for conducting this study is to determine whether the evidence simply reaffirms what we already know or provides new insights about dividend policy. The study is timely given evidence by Fama and Frenchof the declining incidence of dividend payers, which not only reflect
10、s the changing characteristics of dividend payers but also their lower propensity to pay dividends. In this study, we do not focus on the views about dividend policy of managers from the “typical“ Nasdaq firm because most Nasdaq firms either pay no dividends or pay dividends on an irregular basis. I
11、nstead, we investigate the views of a subset of Nasdaq firms, namely, those that consistently pay cash dividends. The fact that most Nasdaq firms do not pay dividends is not surprising given their characteristics. As Damodaran notes, a firms dividend policy tends to follow the firms life cycle. Duri
12、ng the introduction and rapid expansion stages, firms typically pay no or very low dividends. Such films characterize a large portion of firms trading on Nasdaq. Our study differs from previous research on dividend policy in several wa ys. First, unlike prior fieldwork and surveys that focus only on
13、 NYSE-listed firms from a few industries, we study managers from dividend-paying Nasdaq firms from numerous industries. Michel and Baker present evidence that dividend policies vary across industries. Our rationale for examining Nasdaq firms rests on the belief that the views of Nasdaq managers may
14、differ from those of NYSE-listed films because of different firm characteristics such as size. Second, we investigate several areas not examined in previous surveys such as views about historical patterns of dividends, dividend life cycle, and residual dividend policy. Finally, unlike most research
15、that focuses on a single explanation of why companies pay dividends, we examine multiple explanations. By taking this approach, we can assess the relative importance of different reasons for paying dividends based on the level of agreement or disagreement with various statements involving each expla
16、nation. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. The next section provides a brief review of the relevant dividend literature. The third section presents our research questions and empirical predictions followed by a discussion of the methodology and limitations in the fourth section. The
17、 fifth section presents our survey results, and the final section provides a summary and conclusions. In this section, we present three basic areas of dividend research. First, we discuss Lintners classic study that investigates how corporate managers determine their firms dividend policies. We also
18、 review some of the subsequent research related to Lintners findings. Second, we review studies that examine whether dividend policy affects firm value. Third, we present major research findings related to four common explanations for paying dividends-signaling, taxpreference, agency costs, and bird
19、-in-the-hand arguments. Because the amount of research conducted in these areas is voluminous, we confine our review to a few key research findings in each area.3 In his classic study, Lintner(1956)reports that firms have long-run target dividend payout ratios and place their attention more on divid
20、end changes than on absolute dividend levels. He also finds that dividend changes follow shifts in long-run sustainable earnings and managers are hesitant to make dividend changes that may later need to be reversed. Managers also try to stabilize dividends and avoid dividend cuts. Lintner developed
21、a partial adjustment model to describe the dividend decision process that explained 85 percent of year-to-year dividend changes. Several studies including Fama and Babiak, Baker, Farrelly, and Edelman and Baker and Powell (1999) support Lintners behavioral model. Benartzi, Michaely, and Thaler concl
22、ude that“.Lintners model of dividends remains the best description of the dividend setting process available.“ Much empirical research exists investigating whether dividend policy affects firm value. Graham and Dodd and Gordon argue that an increase in the dividend payout increases stock price and l
23、owers the cost of equity, but empirical support for this position is weak. Others such as Litzenberger and Ramaswamy Blume ,and Ang and Peterson(1985)take the opposite position. Their studies report that stocks with high dividend payout ratios have higher required returns and therefore lower prices.
24、 Thus, the issue of which explanation of dividend policy most correct remains unresolved. The finance literature contains four standard explanations for paying dividends-signaling, tax-preference, agency costs, and bird-in-the-hand. The signaling, or asymmetric information, models for paying dividen
25、ds, developed by Bhattacharya(1979),John and Williams(1985),and Miller and Rock(1985),suggest that managers as insiders choose dividend payment levels and dividend increases to signal private information to investors. Managers have an incentive to signal this private information to the investment pu
26、blic when they believe that the current market value of their firms stock is below its intrinsic value. The increased dividend payment serves as a credible signal when other firms that do not have favorable inside information cannot mimic the dividend increase without unduly increasing the chance of
27、 later incurring a dividend cut. Strong support exists for the signaling explanation including research by Aharony and Swary(1980), Asquith and Mullins(1983),Kalay and Lowenstein(1986),Healey and Palepu(1988). A second explanation for paying dividends is tax-preference theory. Favorable tax treatmen
28、t on capital gains (lower capital gains tax rate and deferral of capital gains tax) should cause investors to prefer non dividend-paying stocks. Tests of this tax-preference explanation for paying or not take two forms. According to Brennans version of the capital asset pricing model, dividend-payin
29、g stocks must offer higher pre-tax returns than non dividend-paying stocks, all else equal. Brennans empirical tests, however, are mixed. Also, Black and Scholes (1974) find no evidence of this tax effect, while Litzenberger and Ramaswamy and Kalay and Michaely(1993)find evidence that pre-tax return
30、s are related to dividend yield. Other studies examine the ex-dividend date price drop. Favorable capital gains tax treatment could cause the price drop to be less than the dividend payment and cause investors to prefer nondividend-paying stocks. Empirical evidence on this matter is also inconclusiv
31、e. For example, Elton and Gruber(1970)find an ex-dividend date price drop that is less than the dividend amount, but Michaely(I 991)finds an ex-dividend date price drop equal to the dividend payment. Another explanation for why firms might pay dividends is based on agency relationships between vario
32、us claimholders of the firm. Easterbrook (1984) argues that firms Spay dividends to help reduce the agency costs associated with the separation of ownership and control. By paying dividends, managers must raise funds more frequently in the capital markets where they are subjected to scrutiny and the
33、 disciplining effects of investment professionals. Jensen (1986) makes a similar agency-theory argument where managers pay dividends to reduce the firms discretionary free cash flow that could be used to fund suboptimal investments that benefit managers but diminish shareholder wealth. Rozeff(1982),
34、Lang and Litzenberger(1989), Agrawal and Jayaraman(1994),and Jensen, Solberg, and Zorn(1992)provide empirical support for these agency explanations for paying dividends. Finally, the bird-in-the-hand explanation asserts that paying higher dividends increases firm value because dividends represent a
35、“sure thing“ while future share price appreciation is uncertain. Miller and Modigliani (1961) refer to this as the bird-in-the-hand fallacy. Bhattacharya (1979) correctly argues that the riskiness of a projects cash flows determines a risk and an increase in dividend payout today will simply result
36、in an equivalent drop in the stocks ex-dividend price. Thus, increasing the dividend today will not increase a firms value by reducing the riskiness of future cash flows. Although virtually no empirical support exists for the bird-in-the-hand explanation for paying dividends, we want to determine if
37、 managers views are consistent with previous theoretical and empirical research. Research Questions and Empirical Predictions We address three major research questions in this study. First, what views do Nasdaq managers from dividend-paying firms have on the dividend-setting process? We expect that
38、our survey respondents strongly agree with statements involving Lintners (1956) model on dividend policy. Lintners famous investigation of dividend policy stresses that firms only increase dividends when management believes that earnings have permanently increased. As previously discussed, much supp
39、ort exists for Lintners description of how firms set their dividend payments. We expect the Nasdaq firms studied, all of which have established patterns of paying dividends, to hold similar views. Second, do corporate managers of dividend-paying Nasdaq firms believe a firms dividend payout can affec
40、t firm value? Based on a set of highly restrictive assumptions, Miller and Modigliani (1961) contend that dividend policy has no effect on either the price of a firms stock or its cost of capital. We expect that managers generally believe that dividend policy matters because they operate in a world
41、in which market imperfections can make dividend policy relevant. Therefore, we expect to observe general agreement by managers of Nasdaq firms participating in our study with statements relating to the relationship between dividend policy and value. Study by someone. Finally, Edelman (1985) and othe
42、rs report that managers believe dividend stability is desirable. If this position is correct, investors should prefer stocks that pay more predictable dividends to those that pay the same amount of dividends in the long run but in a more erratic manner. We do not expect the majority of respondents t
43、o agree with statements involving the residual dividend model, which implies that dividends are paid out of “leftover“ earnings. Although using the residual policy may help a firm set its long-run target payout ratio, we believe that managers typically do not use this approach to guide the payout in
44、 any one year because this would lead to erratic dividends. Third, what explanations for paying dividends do Nasdaq managers tend to favor? As previously discussed, researchers have conducted many studies involving various explanations of why companies pay dividends. The empirical evidence is genera
45、lly consistent with several hypotheses generated by the dividend-signaling and agency-cost models, and inconsistent with tax preference theory. As indicated earlier, there is virtually no empirical evidence supporting the bird-in-the-hand theory. Because our dataset consists of firms with establishe
46、d patterns of paying cash dividends, we expect that managers of such firms are sensitive to the signals they may convey to the market by altering this pattern. Therefore, we expect to find that managers of Nasdaq firms agree more strongly with statements about the asymmetric information explanation
47、for paying dividends than with statements about other explanations. 译 文 从管理视角重新审视股利政策 资料来源 : http:/ 作者： GaryE.Powell 股息问题是 让 企业 费解 的 融资 问题之一。米勒和莫迪利亚尼提供的完善的资本市场 ，这是一个无关股息吸引力和广泛接受的说法。在 很 多年以后，米勒承认，观察现金股利的偏好是理论目前本身 的软肋之一。那么，为什么公 司支付股息，为什么投资者会关心？布莱克曾形容为红利 为 “谜” 。但是对于这个问题这样形容似乎并不合适。 为了帮助解释 这个难题， 财务经济学家发明
48、 各种理论 ， 例 如股利 信号 理论 、税收优惠 理论 、 代理成本 理论 、 一鸟在 手 理论 等来解释。由丰富的理论来引导研究 休斯网络系 统公司，我们从 来没有足够的理由 解释，支付多少 股息 最为合适 。 行为金融学的倡导者， Shefrin和 Statman解释为什么要 分红。 Statman争辩，忽略 了 正常投资者行为模式的概念 ， 解决股利之谜是不可能的 。 当今世界，企业经理们留下的 很多 机构往往 和股利 研究 相互冲突。 一个问题引起了我们的深思 ，为什么公司支付股息 的 是审查经理 。谁是负责作出有关决定 意见 的 。过去的实地考察和调查 ，提供了经理人如何确定 公司
49、的股息红利支出 。还有 对各种政策问题的意见 和 重要见解。例如，林特纳关于股利政策的确定 进行 开创性的实证 研究。贝克和鲍威尔和 Edelmanand 等 研究人员调查了经理们 采用 有关股利政策的 意见 。这些研究对股利政策配合其他类型的实证研究 有很大的帮助 。 探讨经理人如何 看待 股息政策， 扩大 上一次调查研究的范围 ，获得 不同的数据。具体来说，我们调查企业管理者的纳斯达克公司，始终 以 现金 支付 股利和 支付股息，以确定他们 有关股利政策 的意见，股利政策与价值之间的关系，以及四种常见的解释。我们进行这项研究的动机 ， 是为了确定证据是否只是重申了我们已经知道或者提供有关股利政策的新见解。这项研究 目的 是 为了 能 及时给予 纳税人 股息，这不仅反映派息的变化特点，而且 反映 其较低分红率 及 下降的证据。 在这项研究中，我们不集中 分析 有关股利政策的管理人员 对于“典型的”纳斯达克公司的意见 ，因为大多数企业 不支付纳斯达克股息或不定期支付 股息。相反，我们研究一个 纳斯达克公司 子公司 的意见，即 一贯支付
