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This study aims at examining the impact of corporate governance on dividend policy among Indonesian companies. There are two theories of the effect of corporate governance on dividend policy: substitution and outcome theory. Substitution theory argue that corporate governance have negative effect on dividend policy, while outcome theory argue that corporate governance have positive effect on dividend policy. Therefore, this study investigates the effect of corporate governance on dividend policy in Indonesia. This study aims at examining the impact of corporate governance on dividend policy among Indonesian companies. There are two theories of the effect of corporate governance on dividend policy: substitution and outcome theory. Substitution theory argue that corporate governance have negative effect on dividend policy, while outcome theory argue that corporate governance have positive effect on dividend policy. Therefore, this study investigates the effect of corporate governance on dividend policy in Indonesia.

The sample of this research comprises 248 firms from Indonesian Stock Exchange during 2004-2006. This research using Transparency and Disclosure Index (TDI) to measure corporate governance in Indonesia

We find that TDI are low among Indonesian firms, with a score of 32 per cent out of the maximum point. This score indicates that Indonesian corporate governance is still low. The results show that there is a negative relation between corporate governance and dividend policy in Indonesia. Thus, the Indonesian companies pay more dividends when corporate governance practice is low. This result confirms applicable of substitution theory in Indonesia.

This research focuses on manufacturing industry in Indonesia. Therefore, the conclusions of this research apply on the manufacturing companies in Indonesia

This research shows that companies with poor corporate governance pay dividend higher than companies with better corporate governance. Thus, investor can use this information to make investment decision.

This research provides evidence on the negative effect of corporate governance on dividend policy in Indonesia (substitution theory).

This chapter analyzes how the industry environment determines corporate dividend decisions. First, common participants in the product market are competitors, suppliers, and customers. These micro-stakeholders create competitive pressures on firms and thus affect their current and future performance. Competitors influence dividend decisions through three mechanisms, namely predation threat, corporate governance, and imitation. Predation threat reduces firms' incentives to pay dividends when facing high rivalry. Competition helps firms improve corporate governance. However, strong corporate governance may increase or decrease dividend payments since dividend policy may be the outcome of strong corporate governance or the substitute for weak corporate governance, respectively. Besides, firms tend to imitate their industry peers in dividend policy. Second, as a financial policy, dividend policy is also affected by participants in the financial market like investors, creditors, and auditors. These financial stakeholders' behaviors are important to stock prices. Due to the agency problem, creditors have high incentives to restrict firm's dividend payments in order to protect their benefits. On the other hand, creditors are effective external monitors who help firms improve their corporate governance. Outside investors affect corporate dividend policy through their valuation. Firms pay more dividends if investors prefer dividends to capital gains. Auditors play the role of a third-party monitor, and thus, they help firms reduce managers' expropriation of shareholders and improve the quality of accounting information. Furthermore, we also investigate dividend policy of regulated industries in both financial sector (banking, insurance, and real estate) and utilities sector (energy, telecommunications, and transportation).

This chapter analyzes how the macro-environment determines corporate dividend decisions. First, political factors including political uncertainty, economic policy uncertainty, political corruption, and democracy may have two opposite effects on dividend decisions. For example, firms learn democratic practices to improve their corporate governance, but dividend policy may be the outcome of strong corporate governance or the substitute for poor corporate governance. Second, firms in countries of high national income, low inflation, and highly developed stock markets tend to pay more dividends. A monetary restriction (expansion) reduces (increases) dividend payments, as economic shocks like financial crises and the COVID-19 may negatively affect corporate dividend policy through higher external financial constraint, economic uncertainty, and agency costs. On the other hand, they may positively influence corporate dividend policy through agency costs of debt, shareholders' bird-in-hand motive, substitution of weak corporate governance, and signaling motive. Third, social factors including national culture, religion, and language affect dividend decisions since they govern both managers' and shareholders' views and behaviors. Fourth, firms tend to reduce their dividends when they face stronger pressure to reduce pollution, produce environment-friendly products, or follow a green policy. Finally, firms have high levels of dividends when shareholders are strongly protected by laws. However, firms tend to pay more dividends in countries of weak creditor rights since dividend payments are a substitute for poor legal protection of creditors. Furthermore, corporate dividend policy changes when tax laws change the comparative tax rates on dividends and capital gains.

This paper aims is to document the relationship between corporate ethics prevailing in the country and the dividend policies adopted by firms.

The paper uses the data of non-financial firms from 61 countries to test the arguments presented in this paper. The data cover the period between 2010 and 2017.

This paper shows that dividend policies adopted by firms are sensitive to corporate ethics prevailing in the country. The firms headquartered in countries with relatively strong corporate ethics are less likely to pay dividends than firms headquartered in countries with relatively weak corporate ethics. These findings are robust across various proxies of dividend policy and across various estimation procedures. The paper, however, also shows that the relationship between corporate ethics and dividend policies is confined only to countries with strong institutional environment. This relationship breaks down in countries with weak institutional environment. Lastly, the paper shows that the value of dividend policy is more pronounced in countries with relatively weak corporate ethics.

Unlike the attempts to relate firm-level ethics and dividend policy, this paper focuses on the relationship between country-level indicator of corporate ethics and dividend policies. The benefit of using the country-level indicator of corporate ethics is that it highlights the general attitude of corporations with respect to ethics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which corporate board characteristics influence the level of dividend pay-out ratio using a sample of UK small- and medium-sized enterprises from 2010 to 2013 listed on the Alternative Investment Market.

The data are analysed by employing multivariate regression techniques, including estimating fixed effects, lagged effects and two-stage least squares regressions.

The results show that board size, the frequency of board meetings, board gender diversity and audit committee size have a significant relationship with the level of dividend pay-out. Audit committee size and board size have a positive association with the level of dividend pay-out, whilst the frequency of board meetings and board gender diversity have a significant negative relationship with the level of dividend pay-out. By contrast, the findings suggest that board independence and CEO role duality do not have any significant effect on the level of dividend pay-out.

This is one of the first attempts at examining the relationship between corporate governance and dividend policy in the UK’s Alternative Investment Market, with the analysis distinctively informed by agency theoretical insights drawn from the outcome and substitution hypotheses.

This paper aims to investigate the relation between corporate governance and dividend policy in Sri Lankan firms.

The data set consists of market data using 1,608 firm-year observations from 201 firms listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange and survey-based data from 151 respondents from the same 201 firms. The authors use data triangulation to examine the two approaches.

The analysis of the market data reveals that a significantly positive relation between corporate governance on both the propensity to pay dividends and dividend payout. Survey analysis confirms these findings. Triangulated evidence supports the outcome model of dividends, free cash flow and agency cost theories.

The findings are useful not only for management in developing suitable corporate governance practices and dividend policies for their firms but also for shareholders in evaluating both existing and new investments. Future researchers should investigate the same phenomenon in other contexts using triangulation approaches to confirm their findings.

This study is the first to use governance indices both in terms of survey and market-based data to examine the relation between corporate governance and dividend policy.

This chapter analyzes how the internal environment determines corporate dividend decisions. First, dividend policy is influenced by strategic and financial issues. Corporate strategies are developed by top managers to achieve firms' missions, visions, and long-term goals while business strategies are designed by middle managers to maintain firms' competitive advantages. These strategies affect corporate dividend decisions through corporate performance and business operations. In addition, many financial characteristics are important determinants of dividend policy. Financial characteristics are classified into three groups, namely performance-related issues (e.g., firm profitability, free cash flow, and stock liquidity), leverage-related issues (e.g., debt ratio, asset tangibility, business risk, and firm size), and investment-related issues (e.g., investment opportunities and firm maturity). Firms with high profitability, free cash flow tends to pay more dividends. Stock liquidity may have a positive effect on dividend payments through lowering costs of equity; however, it may also have a negative effect through weakening the signaling motive. Moreover, firms with high debt ratio, low asset tangibility, high business risk, and small size face higher costs of external financing. Therefore, they have low incentives to pay dividends. When firms have more investment opportunities, they are more likely to restrict dividends and save cash for their investment projects and vice versa. Second, internal stakeholders may influence corporate dividend policy since their benefits are closely related to dividend decisions. Shareholders, directors, the chief executive officer, and employees have different characteristics, positions, and hold various proportions of shares. Therefore, they create pressures on dividend decisions to protect their wealth.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of financial reporting quality (FRQ) on dividend policy. This paper also examines the moderating role of corporate liquidity on the FRQ–dividend policy relationship.

The sample of this paper contains 113 non-financial companies listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange from 2003 to 2019 (1,675 firm-year observations). The authors use OLS regressions to test the hypotheses.

The authors find a positive relationship between FRQ and dividend policy. They also find that the positive effect of FRQ on dividend policy is not strengthened by the presence of corporate liquidity.

The findings of this study offer implications for stakeholders, including investors and others in Saudi Arabia and other developing countries with comparable business environments. This is because of the significant impact of the dividend policy on a company’s value, as it is a crucial decision that involves distributing substantial amounts of money to shareholders on a regular basis and interacts with other critical decisions within the company. Therefore, the dividend policy has a crucial role in determining the company’s value, which is reflected in its stock prices.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study in Saudi Arabia that provides new empirical evidence on the impact of FRQ on dividend policy and the moderating role of corporate liquidity on this relationship.

This study investigates the influence of corporate income tax on two corporate financial decisions — dividend and capital structure policies, particularly for Shariah compliant companies in Malaysia.

The study considered data from a sample of 529 Malaysian listed companies from four industrial sectors from 2007–2021 (6,746 company-year observations, before eliminating outliers). Panel models such as Fixed Effect and Random effect models were used. The study specifically tested the effect of corporate income tax on dividend and capital structure policies for Shariah compliant companies (3,148 observations) and controlled for industrial sectors.

(1) Firms are mostly Shariah-compliant, less liquid, less profitable and smaller in size, (2) Broadly when analysed together, tax has no impact on debt-equity ratio while it has an impact on dividend per share, (3) However, when tested separately for Shariah compliant companies, the influence of effective tax on capital structure is very evident but not for dividend and (4) influence of industrial sector on the relationship between corporate tax and capital structure and dividend policy is significant. Results indicate that Shariah firms might be raising debt to gain tax advantage. Companies in general pay dividends to avoid reputational damage.

This study assumes that leverage and dividend policy decisions are the main outcomes of the changing tax policies, while it seems that there could be other important outcomes that can be tested in future research. The study also shows the changing tax regimes of different ASEAN countries but they have not been tested to see the differences between countries. It will be indeed interesting for future researchers to focus on this aspect.

The findings contribute to the literature on tax planning of the Shariah-compliant firms, a high growth business segment in the Asian context. The study discussed potential tax-based Islamic market product development.