IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/rqfnac/v17y2001i4p361-76.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Prior Information and the Market Reaction to Dividend Changes

Author

Listed:
  • Best, Roger J
  • Best, Ronald W

Abstract

We investigate two hypotheses regarding the information content of dividend change announcements. The first is that the "importance" of information signaled by a dividend change depends on the reliability of earnings forecasts existing before the dividend announcement. The second hypothesis is that the stock price reaction to dividend change announcements is related to earnings forecast error as of the time of the dividend announcement. Our results reveal that dividend increases convey more information for firms in which financial analysts least accurately predict earnings. The results also indicate that dividend increase and decrease announcements provide market participants with information which, on average, allows them to differentiate between firms on the basis of future earnings realizations. These differential information effects are shown to be robust to price, size, dividend yield, and overinvestment effects. Copyright 2001 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Suggested Citation

  • Best, Roger J & Best, Ronald W, 2001. "Prior Information and the Market Reaction to Dividend Changes," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 361-376, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:rqfnac:v:17:y:2001:i:4:p:361-76
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/0924-865X/contents
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Xin Che & Andre P. Liebenberg & Ivonne A. Liebenberg & Brandon C. L. Morris, 2018. "The effect of growth opportunities on the market reaction to dividend cuts: evidence from the 2008 financial crisis," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 51(1), pages 1-17, July.
    2. Xin Che & Kathleen P. Fuller, 2020. "What does the timing of dividend reductions signal?," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 55(3), pages 1035-1061, October.
    3. Cuong Nguyen, 2019. "The asymmetry in firms’ mechanisms of cash holdings adjustments: evidence from the G-5 economies," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 429-463, August.
    4. Jitka Hilliard & John S. Jahera & Haoran Zhang, 2019. "The US financial crisis and corporate dividend reactions: for better or for worse?," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 53(4), pages 1165-1193, November.
    5. Chen, Zhijuan & Lin, William T. & Ma, Changfeng & Tsai, Shih-Chuan, 2014. "Liquidity provisions by individual investor trading prior to dividend announcements: Evidence from Taiwan," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 358-374.
    6. Kamil Polak, 2018. "Investors’ Reaction to a Published Recommendation (Wplyw opublikowanej rekomendacji na reakcje inwestorow)," Research Reports, University of Warsaw, Faculty of Management, vol. 1(27), pages 127-135.
    7. Taleb Lotfi, 2018. "Dividend Policy in Tunisia: A Signalling Approach," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 10(4), pages 84-94, April.
    8. Philip A. Hamill & Wasim Al-Shattarat, 2012. "What Determines the Dividend Payout Ratio for Jordanian Industrial Firms?," Journal of Emerging Market Finance, Institute for Financial Management and Research, vol. 11(2), pages 161-188, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:rqfnac:v:17:y:2001:i:4:p:361-76. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.