We compare the dividend policies of privatelyand publicly-held firms in order to examine Lintner’s (1956) model of dividends, as wells as more recent agency-based and informationbased explanations of observed dividend behavior. Our findings suggest that both public and private firms exhibit a strong aversion to dividend cuts and omissions; however, public firms adhere to a consistent policy of ...

Based on the fundamental equations of equity valuation, we derive here the relationship between the equity risk premium, duration and dividend yield. Aside from providing a logical foundation for the difference between the ex-ante and ex-post measures of the risk premium, the work leads to other outcomes, namely, but not specifically, (1) that the current, effective dividend policy is a signall...

How do dividend taxes affect firm behavior and what are their distributional and efficiency effects? To answer these questions, the first problem is coming up with an explanation for why firms pay dividends, in spite of their tax penalty. This paper surveys three different models for why firms pay dividends, and then uses each model to examine the behavioral and efficiency effects of dividend t...

Due to the overwhelming international evidence that stock prices drop by less than the dividend paid on ex-dividend days, the ex-dividend day anomaly is considered a stylized fact. Two main approaches have emerged to explain this empirical regularity: the tax-clientele hypothesis and the microstructure of financial markets. Although the most widely accepted explanation for this fact relies on t...

We analyze the regularity of the optimal exercise boundary for the American Put option when the underlying asset pays a discrete dividend at a known time td during the lifetime of the option. The ex-dividend asset price process is assumed to follow Black-Scholes dynamics and the dividend amount is a deterministic function of the ex-dividend asset price just before the dividend date. The solutio...

We consider the finite time horizon dividend-ruin model where the firm pays out dividends to its shareholders according to a dividend-barrier strategy and becomes ruined when the firm asset value falls below the default threshold. The asset value process is modeled as a restricted Geometric Brownian process with an upper reflecting (dividend) barrier and a lower absorbing (ruin) barrier. Analyt...

Executive Summary. Both dividend yields and past returns have predictive power for P/E ratios; hence they can be used as tools in forming a market timing and asset allocation strategy in stock markets. This study examines the extent to which changes in real estate returns, reflected in changes of property value and dividend yields, can have great effects on P/E ratios. The study is confined to ...

We model consumption and dividend growth as di¤erent processes across two latent regimes. We estimate the equilibrium model over 1930-2009 and show that the second regime is associated with recessions, market downturns, higher risk premia, lower consumption and dividend growth, higher volatility of returns and growth rates, and lower market-wide price-dividend ratio. The model performs better a...

A financial portfolio typically pays dividend based on its value. We show that there is a unique portfolio that pays the maximum dividend rate while remaining solvent, under appropriate assumptions. We also give a characterization of both the portfolio and the optimal dividend rate. © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In this paper, I test the dividend clientele hypothesis (DCH) by examining the impact of the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (the 2003 tax act) on household portfolio dividend yields. The DCH predicts that the 2003 tax act, which reduced the tax-disadvantage of dividends differentially across the income distribution, would cause high income households to shift their portfo...