Based on the trend of dividend payout ratio from 1986 to 2004 in Taiwan, it appears the companies have experienced two different stages of cash dividend policies. Before 1997, the cash dividend payout ratio declines slowly. But starting 1998, the payout ratio raises substantially, and the sum of cash dividend appears the same trend. Investigate the companies that pay cash dividend out, discover that they concentrate on those make a earning, and focus on those have high profit year by year. The sample is selected from listed companies in Taiwan Stock Market from 1988 to 2004 , not including financial and utility companies. This thesis uses binary logistic regression to test the relationship between company¡¦s characteristics and paying cash dividend, and survey whether this characteristics are the reason to make the cash dividend payout ratio raises quickly. The result of this research found that there is positive relationship between the payout of cash dividend, the company size, profitable ability, and free cash flow ratio. Moreover, there is negative relationship between the payout of cash dividend, growing opportunity, and liability ratio. But among the two variables measuring the growing opportunity, the asset growing ratio has a better interpretation in the earlier stage; and the market-to-book ratio does in the later stage. On the base period of 1988 to 1997, use binary logistic regression and portfolios to set up a model to fit the cash dividend policies. The overall empirical evidence implies the company¡¦s characteristic don¡¦t change the companies¡¦ tendency of paying cash dividend. In other words, the phenomenon of cash dividend payout ratio raising actually is caused by the increasing fundamental tendency of the sample companies paying cash dividend.

The dividend payout policy is a very debated topic, in this thesis the differences between Sweden and Vietnam will be examined. By examine two different countries with more or less the same landmass, but regarding economic, culture and politics they differ highly.   The purpose of this study was to determine whether there were a difference between the countries in dividend payout ratios, to see if the countries payout a high or a low dividend during the years 2005 to 2012. The second purpose was to examine if there was a significant differences in the movements in the markets. The third purpose was to examine how the two countries acted during the financial crisis, if the dividend payout ratio changed. This may tell how the policies in the two countries differ and how long term or short term the firms within the countries were planning and which kind of investors they are attracting. The data being used is collected historical data from firms with in each of the countries. The thesis follows a quantitative research method based on a deductive and an inductive approach. The research design is comparative for examination of two the countries data samples and for the purposes descriptive and explanatory studies have been done. In order to determine whether there is a relationship between the countries dividend payout ratio, the normality of the data sample have been examined, showing that the data were not normal distributed. Therefor the data were examined with a Mann- Whitney test and by a Kruskal- Wallis test.   The result indicates that there is a difference between the countries in dividend payout ratios in the case of Vietnam and Sweden under the years 2005 to 2012. Comparing countries together between the years to determine possible differences, the dividend payout ratio was insignificant in 2005 to 2008, but significant in the years 2009 to 2012. The examination of Vietnam and Sweden separately with years as factors the dividend payouts in Vietnam showed a significant difference but an insignificant result in Sweden during the year 2005 to 2008. Further, the results showed that there is a difference between the years in Sweden between 2009 to 2012 but no differences in Vietnam under the same years.

This study examines the effect of ownership structure on dividend policy of 284 firms listed on the OMX Stockholm Exchange in Swedenfrom 2010-2015. Specifically, the purpose of the study is to investigate therelationship betweendifferentinvestor types and dividend policies of firms, measured as dividend yield and dividend payout ratio.Also, the study aims to predict dividend behaviours based on ownership structure which may be useful inthe future since ownership structures of listed Swedish firms havebeen changing over time, with an increased consolidation of ownership and a sharpincrease in institutional ownership. The sample consistsof 1046 observations and was gathered from Thomson Reuters’ Datastream and Eikon databases. This is the first study to examine the relationship between ownership structure and dividend policy in Sweden.The dividend policy is measured using two dependent variables; dividend payout ratio anddividend yield and a multiple regression has been used in orderto test the hypotheses whether any relationships exist between 17 different types of ownership structure used as independent variables, four additional control variables and dividend policy.The findings indicated significant positive relationships between institutional ownership and dividend yield and dividend payout, with one exception being private equity which exhibited a negative relationship with dividend yield. Furthermore, market capitalization, return on assets and price to book value are positively related to dividend payout while debt/equity ratio showed a negative relationship with dividend yield. The results contradict those of the most recent research conducted in Turkey (Al-Najjar & Kilincarsla, 2016) but adds supportin the debateto existing theories of dividends’ relevance to the value of firms developed by Gordon (1963), Lintner (1962) and Walter (1963). Limitations of the study include the geographical delimitation to Sweden which creates some constraints to wider generalization ofthe results to other geographical settings. Furthermore, the datacollected from Thomson Reuters Eikon hadmissing values, showed signs of heteroscedasticity and relevant investor variables such as family ownership were unavailable.

This study investigates the relationship between corporate sustainability and dividend policy in the Nordic countries. In the field of finance, the importance of corporate sustainability is growing, particularly in the Nordic countries, which excel in global sustainability rankings. In response to this occurrence many firms are increasingly incorporating sustainability into their operations, which in turn might affect the strategic decisions of these firms. One of these is the dividend policy decision. Dividend policy in the form of cash dividends is a central concept in finance and is affected by conservation of capital and time value of money. The purpose of this study is to clarify the relationship between sustainability and dividend policy, which the authors have done by including different theoretical arguments. These are grounded in the agency theory, the signaling theory and the stakeholder theory. Previous research such as Benlemlih (2019) has examined the relationship between sustainability and dividends, but not in the same regional setting. ESG is used as a proxy for sustainability, while two proxies are used for dividend policy; dividend payout ratio and dividend yield. Through a quantitative approach information is collected on the ESG score and dividend data using the Thomson Reuters Eikon database and then analyzed using regression analysis. The data spans over 10 years (2008-2018) and covers 117 firms with available ESG and dividend payout data.  The findings indicate that there is a significant relationship between the ESG score and the dividend payout ratio of Nordic firms, while the dividend yield has no relationship with the ESG score. As both measurements had positive coefficients, the authors determined that there is a positive relationship between sustainability and dividend policy. Based on the findings, the excess liquidity hypothesis was dismissed, while the authors concluded that there was support for and against the overinvesting hypothesis and the signaling hypothesis. The authors believe one possible explanation for these mixed results could be due to the regional setting, as it differs from the settings of previous studies. By illustrating the relationship between corporate sustainability and dividend policy, this study could be of interest to large and medium sized firms in the Nordic countries that use business strategies involving ESG practices or consider implementing such strategies. Similarly, it could be used by investors that use ESG-screening as a decision criterion when investing.

This thesis investigates what effects control enhancing mechanisms that are associated with vote differentiation have on dividend payout policy among Swedish listed firms. The data collected for this study is for the period 2005-2007 and the sample consists of 109 companies where 61 of these have shares that are vote differentiated, and the remaining 48 companies have the one share –one vote structure. The variables in the regressions are dividend payout ratio, a dummy for vote differentiation, growth in earnings, size, Tobin’s Q and ownership structure. Three separate hypotheses are applied for reaching a scientific answer to the thesis question. The results indicate that dividend payout policy is significantly negatively affected by the presence of vote differentiation and that vote concentration among the five largest shareholders is generally higher in such firms. The results do also indicate that dividend payout is determined by firm size, growth and investment performance which are in line with earlier studies. From the results, parallels have been drawn between investment performance, ownership concentration, vote differentiation and dividend payout policy. Firms that have vote differentiated shares tend to overinvest instead of paying out dividends when this presumably would be a more appropriate decision considering the aspect of efficiency. As a final conclusion based on the findings, the thesis confirms the argument on that vote differentiating among shares should be reconsidered for better reforms.

This research examines the impact of dividend payout (DP) on future effective firm value for a large international sample of publicly listed companies. Besides the known share price drop right after dividend announcements, literature provides a solid basis for argumentation towards a positive as well as a negative relationship on a longer horizon, going beyond this initial market reaction. The underlying research is the first to discuss and directly examine this issue, following the valuation model introduced by Fama and French (1998). The statistically significant and robust results show a positive impact of DP towards future firm value on a one- and two-year horizon. This research further accounts for the effect of National Governance (NG), proxied by the World Governance Index, as country level moderator on the main relationship. The interacting effect on the main variables is statistically significant on horizons beyond one year.

Using a sample of 434 firms listed on U.S. capital markets, including Over-the-counter, and 356 domestically listed firms from 47 countries during 2010 to 2015, this research confirms corporate governance’s positive effect, as well as growth opportunities’ negative effect on firm’s dividend payout. Then, based on the proved relationship above, this research also finds support that cross-listing and Over-the-counter both strengthen the positive relationship between growth opportunities and dividend payout. Meanwhile, although cross-listed and Over-the-counter firms do have stronger corporate governance, no evidence is observed for their strengthening the negative effect of corporate governance on dividend payout.

The dividend payout policy is one of the most debated topics within corporate finance and some academics have called the company’s dividend payout policy an unsolved puzzle. Even though an extensive amount of research regarding dividends has been conducted, there is no uniform answer to the question: what are the determinants of the companies’ dividend payout ratios? We therefore decided to conduct a study regarding the determinants of the companies’ dividend payout ratios on large and medium cap on Stockholm stock exchange. The purpose of the study is to determine if there is a relationship between a number of company selected factors and the companies’ dividend payout ratios. A second purpose is to determine whether there are any differences between large and medium caps regarding the impact of the company selected factors. We therefore reviewed previous studies and dividend theories in order to conclude which factors that potentially could have an impact on the companies’ dividend payout ratios. Based on the literature, we decided to test the relationship between the dividend payout ratio and six company selected factors: free cash flow, growth, leverage, profit, risk and size. The data used in the research are secondary data collected during a time period of five years, between 2006 and 2010. The study follows a quantitative research method with a deductive approach and we have based the study on four dividend theories: the dividend irrelevance theory, the bird in hand theory, the signaling theory and the agency theory. In order to determine whether there is a relationship between the companies selected factors and the dividend payout ratio we conducted both an Ordinary least square (OLS) and a Tobit regression. Multicollinearity tests were also conducted in order to ascertain that no multicollinearity affected the results of the study. The results indicate that some of the company selected factors have an impact on the companies’ dividend payout ratios and there are some differences between large and medium caps. The dividend payout ratios of large caps have a significant relationship to free cash flow, growth and risk. While the dividend payout ratios of medium caps have a significant relationship to free cash flow, leverage, risk and size.

This paper investigates the determinants of excess returns using dividend yields as a proxy in a cross-sectional setting. First, we find that types of industry and the current business cycle are determining factors of returns. Second, our results suggest that dividend yield serves a signaling mechanism indicating “healthiness” of a firm among prospective investors. Third we see that there is a positive relationship between dividend yield and risk, especially in the utility and financial sectors. And finally, using actual excess returns, instead of dividend yield in our model shows that all predictors of dividend yield were also significant predictors of excess returns. This connection between dividend yield and excess returns support our use of dividend yield as a proxy for excess returns.

This study investigates whether family ownership impacts firms’ dividend payout policies by examining firms publicly listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange (OMX Stockholm) during the years 2013–2018 (1,363 firm-year observations). The investigation is made by performing multiple regression analyses including the dependent variable DIVIDEND PAYOUT. The findings reveal that family firms distribute higher dividend payouts than non-family firms, suggesting that dividends are used as a corporate governance mechanism to mitigate agency problems. Family firms without a second blockholder present have the highest dividends. A family second blockholder appears to collude with the controlling family resulting in lower dividends. A separation between ownership and control results in higher dividends as it implies a worse corporate governance structure. In sum, the results imply that family ownership positively impacts firms’ dividend payout policies in Sweden.