The majority of managers set themselves some long-term coefficient-objective for the distribution of dividends in relation to the profits of the period (target payout ratio). But they do not mechanically apply this ratio to each year’s profits as they try to avoid brusque fluctuations which could provoke movements in investors’ positions in imperfect markets. The purpose of this paper is to verify whether the dividend distribution policy of a company depends not only on profit but also on other factors, amongst which the both the theoretical and empirical literature point to the following: the profitability of the company, the stability of its earnings, its rate of growth and opportunities for investment and its financial and governing structure, highlighting the institutional aspects of the financial systems of the countries in which banks operate. The results obtained in the empirical test allow us to affirm that the policy of payouts does not depend solely on business profits. We observe that the economic and financial factors proposed by the theories mentioned, along with institutional factors, in practice determine the dividends of companies according to the structure of government which exists within organisations.
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
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Myers, Stewart C., 1984.
"Capital structure puzzle,"
Working papers
1548-84., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
[Downloadable!]
Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1998.
"Law and Finance,"
Journal of Political Economy,
University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(6), pages 1113-1155, December.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silane & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1996.
"Law and Finance,"
NBER Working Papers
5661, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)