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Several studies have observed that stocks tend to drop by an amount that is less than the dividend on the ex-dividend day, the so-called ex-dividend day anomaly. However, there still remains a lack of consensus for a single explanation of this anomaly. Different from other studies, this dissertation attempts to answer the primary research question: how can investors make trading profits from the ex-dividend day anomaly and how much can they earn? With this goal, I examine the economic motivations of equity investors through four main hypotheses identified in the anomaly's literature: the tax differential hypothesis, the short-term trading hypothesis, the tick size hypothesis, and the leverage hypothesis.

While the U.S. ex-dividend anomaly is well studied, I examine a long data window (1975–2010) of Thailand data. The unique structure of the Thai stock market allows me to assess all four main hypotheses proposed in the literature simultaneously. Although I extract the sample data from two data sources, I demonstrate that the combined data are consistently sampled. I further construct three trading strategies – “daily return,” “lag one daily return,” and “weekly return” – to alleviate the potential effect of irregular data observation.

I find that the ex-dividend day anomaly exists in Thailand, is governed by the tax differential, and is driven by short-term trading activities. That is, investors trade heavily around the ex-dividend day to reap the benefits of the tax differential. I find mixed results for the predictions of the tick size hypothesis and results that are inconsistent with the predictions of the leverage hypothesis.

I conclude that, on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, juristic and foreign investors can profitably buy stocks cum-dividend and sell them ex-dividend while local investors should engage in short sale transactions. On average, investors who employ the daily return strategy have earned significant abnormal return up to 0.15% (45.66% annualized rate) and up to 0.17% (50.99% annualized rate) for the lag one daily return strategy. Investors can also make a trading profit by conducting the weekly return strategy and earn up to 0.59% (35.67% annualized rate), on average.

This research aims to examine the relationship between dividend payment and earnings quality.

The authors examine four dividend features: dividend-paying status, dividend size, dividend changes, and dividend persistence. The samples consist of 90 firms from the manufacturing industry in the years 2005-2009. Multiple regression is used for testing hypotheses.

The results show that dividend-paying status, dividend increase, and persistence in dividend payment have significant positive association with earnings quality. However, the authors do not find evidence that larger dividend size is an indicator of higher earnings quality. Overall, the results show that dividend-paying status, increase in dividend size, and persistence in dividend payment are indicators or signals of higher earnings quality.

This study examines only the manufacturing firms listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange. Further study based on different industries and/or different emerging markets is needed before generalizing results.

Few studies have examined dividend payment in emerging markets. This study fills the void.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of board structure on dividend policy of Australian corporate firms. It also considers the traditional explanations of corporate dividend choice, such as agency cost theory, signalling hypothesis, the life cycle hypothesis along with tax-based explanations of dividend policy.

The final sample consists of 413 non-financial firms that are part of the All Ordinaries Index. The causal analysis was undertaken in three stages. In the first stage, the authors analyse the likelihood of paying dividends. And classify all firms as either dividend payers or non-payers. The authors then model this binary variable as a function of different sets of variables. In the second stage, the authors analyse the factors determining the magnitude of dividend payout by those firms that have paid a dividend. In contrast, stage three employs all firms – those which did not pay any dividend and those firms which paid a dividend.

For the study period 2004-2009, this study finds that board independence has a significant positive influence on the dividend payout of Australian firms. This finding is consistent with the “outcome” model of La Porta et al. (2000). This study also finds that size has a significant positive influence on the dividend payout of Australian firms thus providing support for the agency cost view of dividend policy. Similarly, this study also finds support for the signalling hypothesis and the life cycle theory given the significant positive influence of profitability and the significant negative influence of current losses and growth opportunities on the dividend policy of Australian firms.

The findings of the study are robust with to alternative measures of variables employed and are not influenced by the global financial crisis. However, this study did not consider the possible endogenous and multiple relationships between dividends, debt, profitability, cash holdings and governance structures given the limited study period considered.

This study finds that board independence has a significant positive influence on the dividend behaviour of Australian firms. This suggests that dividends and independent directors play complementary governance roles. While dividends provide the monitoring and disciplinary roles, independent directors act as catalysts for enhancing effective board functioning. These findings have implications for corporate governance policies and the payout policies.

Though the governance role of dividends has long been recognized in the literature (Easterbrook, 1984; Jensen, 1986), very few studies analyse the influence of board characteristics on the decision to pay dividends in Australia. Given the distinct Australian setting where the tax imputation system allows companies to pay franked dividends to domestic investors, this study provides evidence on the interaction of corporate and dividend policies. This study finds that dividend polices are influenced by percentage franking of dividends. This study also finds that board independence has a significant positive influence on the dividend policy of Australian firms.

This paper aims to examine the extent to which corporate board attributes influence dividend payout policies.

A total number of 2,842 firm’s year-observations of Malaysian non-financial firms representing from various industries. The firms were scrutinized over a period of 14 financial years covering from 2005 to 2018. The data was in a panel form given the cross-sectional and time-series nature. The fixed effect is used as the main technique for analysis. The OLS and random effects techniques are used for robustness for this study.

The results revealed that the proportion of board independence, board tenure, board size and CEO duality have a positive and statistically mixed effect on dividend pay-out. However, the corporate board diversity and board member age had a negative association with dividend payouts. Overall, the results suggest that firms with well-organized corporate board attribute affect positively on dividend pay-out policy.

This research contributes to a nuanced understanding of internal governance mechanisms by presenting evidence of the substitution hypothesis in an emerging economy in which firms operate within a unique regulatory framework and board composition.

This study aims to find whether the Indian private corporate sector follow stable cash dividend policies, whether dividends smoothen earnings, estimate the implicit target dividend ratio, and examine the determinants along with speed of adjustment of dividends towards a long run target ratio.

The study uses the instrumental variable (IV) approach for dynamic panel data for 1971‐2010 periods controlling for economic reforms. The GMM‐in‐levels model, GMM‐in‐first‐differences and GMM‐in‐systems are alternatively estimated to include other lag structures.

In the post‐reform period lower dividends are consistent with rapid growth in the economic environment and the tendency to smoothen dividends has considerably decreased over time. The estimated model suggests dividends substitute for less opportunity for internal growth and increased general likening to relatively retain their earnings and finance their growth, unlike the past.

Limitation to capture substitution, ownership and self selection effects stems up from data as the Annual Studies RBI does not include such variables, does not capture qualitative data and disallows identification of the firm.

The paper documents long run trends and inter‐temporal dividend patterns controlling economic reforms for a relatively larger number of public limited firms nearing four decades for an emerging economy.

This is a first attempt to take a holistic view of dividend using rich set of unexplored dynamic panel data on Indian firms controlling for reforms using contemporary econometric models and analyzes issues relating determinants, smoothening and stability of the corporate dividend structure.

This study aims to investigate the determinants of the dividend policy of public listed companies in Malaysia. The factors examined in this study include earnings, cash flows, free cash flows, debt level, growth, investment, size, largest shareholders, risk and lagged dividend.

Data were obtained from the relevant databases and annual reports of the sampled companies. The study examines a total of 147 listed companies. In analyzing the data, the study used fixed and random effects, pooled least squares model, robust standard errors on fixed effects and random-effects models.

The results revealed the five factors that are earnings, debt, size, investment and largest shareholder have a significant influence on dividend policy, with earnings, firm size and investment revealed to have a positive significant effect, while debt and large shareholders have a negative significant effect.

The findings from this study are useful to the board of directors and management team of companies in deciding an appropriate dividend policy for the company. The results are also useful to shareholders in making investment decisions.

The study extends empirical evidence on dividend policy determinants which are currently reported to be inconclusive. In addition, the study fills the lacuna in the existing literature by focusing on the issue of dividend policy determinants in the context of an emerging economy, namely, Malaysia.

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.

This paper aims to extend and contribute to prior UK research on the association between information asymmetry and dividends propensity. It seeks to investigate the impact of the number of analysts following firms, a proxy for information asymmetry, on dividends propensity.

Using a 282 UK FTSE‐All Share non‐financial/non‐utilities firms with fiscal year ends on 2007, the paper uses a multiple regression model to investigate the association between dividends and analysts following.

The paper finds that after controlling for firm‐specific characteristics, there is a significant negative association between the number of analysts following firms and dividend propensity. The finding suggests that higher coverage of financial analysts for UK firms reduces levels of information asymmetry between managers and shareholders, which results in lower dividend propensity. These findings are consistent with agency theory and pecking order theory, but inconsistent with signalling theory.

The paper contributes to prior research related to the drivers of dividend propensity by being the first UK study to examine the association between dividend propensity and information asymmetry.

This paper aims to make an attempt to identify the determinants of dividend policy by analyzing 125 real estate companies, which are selected on the basis of consistent dividend distribution throughout the study period. Most of these companies either listed with Bombay Stock Exchange or National Stock Exchange.

This paper applies three alternative methods to verify and validate the results obtained from each other method, namely, fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS), dynamic ordinary least square and generalized method of moments (GMM). Data collected of the selected companies’ post-recession period i.e. 2009-2017. The selected companies have age either 5 years old or more when data are retrieved from the above-mentioned sources. Due to much volatility in the recession period in the real estate firms at the global level, no data have been taken of the firms before March 2009. Moreover, for arriving at good analysis and an adequate number of observations for the study more recent data have been taken.

Empirical findings of this research paper depict that firm previous dividend, firm risk and liquidity are strong predictors of future dividend payout ratios (DPRs). The results indicate that firm risk as measured through price-earnings ratio (PE ratio) has a positive association with a DPR of selected real estate firms. Lagged DPR used in the GMM test as an exogenous variable is showing positive significant association with DPR. Firm’s growth is found significant in FMOLS and GMM techniques. On the other firm’s size is found significant according to cointegration techniques.

The present study shall be useful to different stakeholders of real estate companies. Various significant determinants as identified can be used by management for designing optimum dividend policy and providing maximum benefits to existing shareholders. Similarly existing and prospective shareholders may predict the future payment of dividend and accordingly they may take investment decisions in these firms, as the future fund’s requirement of a firm depends upon dividend payment and retention ratio.

As per the authors’ knowledge, there is no single study carried in the post-recession period to predict determinants of dividend policy of real estate sector using three alternatives of methods to verify and validate the results obtained from each other method. The study is carried out after exploring determinant from a diverse range of period of studies (oldest one to latest one).

This study examined the impact of board size, independence and gender diversity on firm dividend payout. Furthermore, it examined whether the board characteristic–dividend payout relationship was moderated by free cash flows in the firm.

A total of 118 Indian firms representing multiple industries were examined for a period of four financial years from 2013 to 2016. The data are in panel form given the cross-sectional and time series nature of the study. Random effects specification was used for analysis

Results of the study indicated that the proportion of independent directors and proportion of female directors on the board have a negative and significant effect on dividend payout. In addition, the results showed a negative and significant moderating role of free cash flows, which implied that the magnitude of the impact of the proportion of independent directors and the proportion of female directors on the board on dividend payout is significantly greater in firms with high free cash flows. Overall, the results suggested that firms whose board characteristics signaled strong governance paid lower dividends.

This study contributes to a nuanced understanding of internal governance mechanisms by presenting evidence of the substitution hypothesis from an emerging economy, one in which firms operate within a unique regulatory framework of board composition.