IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/finmgt/v55y2026i2p275-299.html

Inalienable Human Capital and Inevitable Corporate Payouts

Author

Listed:
  • Shuxun Cai
  • Kose John
  • Xiaoran Ni
  • Chi Zhang

Abstract

We highlight that the inalienable nature of human capital can crucially determine the division of economic gains between shareholders and other counterparts in view of corporate payouts. Exploiting the staggered rejections of the inevitable disclosure doctrine (IDD) across 15 US states as exogenous shocks that potentially increase the mobility and bargaining power of key talents, we find that treatment firms increase payouts relative to control firms following those events. The baseline effects are more pronounced among firms that are more reliant on key human capital, have better corporate governance and stronger financial conditions, and are faced with greater product market competition. These findings suggest that higher payouts enable shareholders to deter the capture of economic rents by key talents who threaten to leave. That is, due to shareholders’ counteraction, the inalienable nature of key human capital, a subgroup of labor, may unintendedly result in an unfavorable division of economic gains for labor as a whole.

Suggested Citation

  • Shuxun Cai & Kose John & Xiaoran Ni & Chi Zhang, 2026. "Inalienable Human Capital and Inevitable Corporate Payouts," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 55(2), pages 275-299, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:finmgt:v:55:y:2026:i:2:p:275-299
    DOI: 10.1111/fima.70007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/fima.70007
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/fima.70007?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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:bla:finmgt:v:55:y:2026:i:2:p:275-299. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fmaaaea.html .

    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.