There are two common methods for pricing European call options on a stock with known dividends. The market practice is to use the Black-Scholes formula with the stock price reduced by the present value of the dividends. An alternative approach is to increase the strike price with the dividends compounded to expiry at the risk-free rate. These methods correspond to different stock price models a...

We compute the value of a firm that pays its cash flows each period through share repurchases in a dynamic environment where personal taxes are paid on realized capital gains and dividends. These results provide a measure of the personal tax advantages of equity financing relative to debt financing, which are often cited as increasing the cost of debt. The initial price of the firm depends on t...

We study the dynamic general equilibrium of an economy where risk averse shareholders delegate the management of the firm to risk averse managers. The optimal contract has two main components: an incentive component corresponding to a non-tradable equity position and a variable ’salary’ component indexed to the aggregate wage bill and to aggregate dividends. Tying a manager’s compensation to th...

Financial regulation imposes equity buffers on banks by restricting dividends. This paper studies constrained-efficient dividend policy when fund loans with and debt. In the model, bank shareholders consider costly a bank’s access to debt depends its shareholder value. response loan losses cut dividends, but eventually defer dividends too much. They do not internalize that commitment higher (an...

Article history: Received 21 September 2011 Received in revised form 28 December 2012 Accepted 7 January 2013 Available online 23 January 2013 This paper investigates how the state-controlling ownership and the ownership through corporate pyramid structures affect the dividend policies of publicly listed firms in China. We find that the state-controlled firms in China pay higher dividends (meas...

I examine the role of debt-financed special payments to shareholders in defending incumbent managements during proxy contests. This role is based on shareholder preference for dividends and the consequent linkage between dividends and managerial security. The model is used to explain why the seemingly contradictory phenomena of (i) wealth losses to shareholders and (ii) lack of any substantial ...

This paper examines the relation between the Seasoned Equity Offering (SEO) announcement effect and earnings timeliness. I predict that firms with greater earnings timeliness tend to have less information asymmetry between managers and investors, thus decreasing the magnitude of the price drop at the SEO announcement. As anticipated, I find that SEO negative announcement effect varies inversely...