Since the 1960’s, there is an ongoing debate on dividend policy, which remains a controversial issue to this day. Why do firms pay dividends? The academics have not been able to agree on any convincing explanation, and the same time, many even claim that firms should not pay dividends, and so we have a “dividend puzzle”. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the main findings of two more recent fields of research, and to discuss why they seem to be the most promising avenues for further research, to solve the “dividend puzzle”, and to build a complete payout policy theory. These fields are: (i) the agency theory and (ii) the lifecycle theory. Besides being very intuitive, these theories are consistent with most empirical facts on U.S. firms’ payout policy.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Department of Economics at the School of Economics and Management (ISEG), Technical University of Lisbon. in its series Working Papers with number
2008/38.
Length: Date of creation: Jul 2008 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:ise:isegwp:wp382008
Contact details of provider: Postal: Department of Economics, School of Economics and Management (ISEG), Technical University of Lisbon, Rua do Quelhas 6, 1200-781 LISBON, PORTUGAL Web page: http://www.iseg.utl.pt/departamentos/economia/
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Vitor Escaria).
Related research
Keywords:
Find related papers by JEL classification: G35 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Payout Policy
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: