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This study aims to examine dividend policy from the perspective of institutional investors in India. It focuses on the level of importance these investors attach to the dividend policy of their investee firms, the level of influence they exercise in shaping such firms’ dividend policies and their reactions to changes in dividends. This study also reports how institutional investors view various explanations for paying dividends.

A mail survey provides a profile of respondents and their firms, as well as responses to 29 closed-ended questions involving various explanations for paying dividends and 22 closed-ended questions on various dividend issues.

The evidence shows that Indian institutional investors attach substantial importance to dividend policy and prefer high dividend payments. Their reactions to dividend changes are asymmetric. Taxes are a major driver for why they seek dividends, whereas liquidity needs to play little role in shaping their preferences. The two most commonly used methods of active monitoring are selling shares and communicating concerns to investee companies.

The number of responses limits the ability to test for statistically significant differences between the various competing hypotheses.

The findings support multiple explanations for paying cash dividends and provide new evidence supporting the positive relation between inflation and dividend payments.

This study provides the first survey evidence on the views of institutional investors on dividend policy in India.

The purpose of this paper is to survey managers of dividend-paying firms listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in India to learn their views about the factors influencing dividend policy, dividend issues, and explanations for paying cash dividends and repurchasing shares. The authors compare the results to other dividend surveys based on firms in Indonesia, Canada, and the USA.

The authors use questionnaire to gather primary data from a sample of 500 firms listed on the NSE.

The most important determinants of dividends involve earnings (the stability of earnings as well as the level of current and expected future earnings) and the pattern of past dividends. Comparing the overall rankings of the 21 factors by respondents from Indian firms to those of Indonesian, Canadian, and US firms reveals statistically significant correlations. Respondents also perceive that dividend policy affects firm value. Respondents also view maintaining an uninterrupted record of dividends as important. The most highly supported explanations for paying cash dividends concern signaling, the firm life cycle, and catering. Although none of the theories of repurchasing shares is dominant, respondents provide little support for the agency explanation.

Although the tests suggest that the sample does not suffer from non-response bias, the findings should be viewed as suggestive rather than definitive because of the relatively low response rate.

The paper presents new evidence about dividend policy of Indian firms. To the knowledge, this is the most comprehensive survey of Indian firms to date that captures managerial perceptions on both cash dividends and share repurchases.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the dividend policy determinants of Sri Lankan firms and why they pay dividends.

The study uses several quantitative approaches to investigate dividend determinants using market (secondary) data of 190 Sri Lankan firms and 1,330 firm-year observations. Dividend determinants are also identified using survey (primary) data from 141 of the 190 firms. Triangulation is then used to facilitate validation of the data through cross-verification from two data sources.

Analysis of the market data reveals that firm size, industry impact, corporate governance, free cash flow, earnings, past dividends, profitability, investment opportunities, net working capital, concentrated ownership structure and investor preference represent the most important dividend determinants. Survey data confirm these findings. The evidence supports the pecking order, signaling, free cash flow, catering and outcome theories using both secondary and primary data and the bird-in-the-hand theory using survey data.

The findings are useful not only for corporate decision makers in establishing an appropriate dividend policy but also for shareholders in making investment decisions. Because the current study is limited to Sri Lanka, future researchers should study the same phenomenon in other countries using the triangulation approach.

This study provides a hybrid approach to dividend policy research by using both primary and secondary data in a single study. It is the first dividend study in Sri Lanka to use a triangulation approach.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview and synthesis of some important literature on dividend policy, chronicle changing perspectives and trends, provide stylized facts, offer practical implications, and suggest avenues for future research.

The authors provide a survey of literature surveys with a focus on insights for paying cash dividends.

The analysis of literature surveys on dividend policy provides some stylized facts. For example, US evidence indicates that the importance of cash dividends as a part of investors’ total returns has declined over time. Share repurchases now play an increasingly important role in payout policy in countries permitting stock buybacks. The popular view is that dividend policy is important, as evidenced by the large amount of money involved and the attention that firms, security analysts, and investors give to dividends. Firms tend to follow a managed dividend policy rather than a residual dividend policy, which involves paying dividends from earnings left over after meeting investment needs while maintaining its target capital structure. Certain determinants of cash dividends are consistently important over time in shaping actual dividend policies including the stability of past dividends and current and anticipated earnings. No universal set of factors is appropriate for all firms because dividend policy is sensitive to numerous factors including firm characteristics, market characteristics, and substitute forms of dividends. Universal or one-size-fits-all theories or explanations for why companies pay dividends are too simplistic.

The dividend puzzle remains an important topic in modern finance.

This is the first a survey of literature surveys on cash dividends.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Moroccan institutional investors view dividend policy. It discusses the importance these investors attach to the dividend policy of their investee firms, how much influence they exercise in shaping investee firms’ dividend policies, their reactions to changes in dividends, and their views on various explanations for paying dividends.

A mail survey provides a respondent and firm profile and responses to 28 questions involving various explanations for paying dividends and 30 questions on different dividend issues.

Institutional investors attach substantial importance to dividend policy and prefer high dividend payments. Although liquidity needs are a major driver, taxes play little role in shaping dividend preferences. Respondents agree with multiple explanations for paying dividends giving the strongest support to catering, bird-in-the-hand, life cycle, signaling, and agency theories.

Despite a high response rate, the number of respondents limits partitioning the sample and testing for significant differences between different groups.

The lack of communication between Casablanca Stock Exchange (CSE) listed firms and institutional investors may depress stock prices and increase volatility. The results suggest agency problems and a weak governance environment at the CSE.

This study documents the importance that institutional investors place on dividend policy, their reactions to changes in their investees’ dividend policy, and the methods used to influence these firms. It extends previous research by reporting the level of support Moroccan institutional investors give to various explanations for paying dividends.

Financial professionals are increasingly important in the Indian financial system. Our study examines the association between the Big Five personality traits and Indian financial professionals' behavioral biases when making investment decisions.

After testing our questionnaire's reliability and validity, we used it to obtain the sample responses. We used multiple regression analysis and other statistical tools to identify the relationships between the Big Five personality traits and behavioral biases.

Our findings reveal a high level of extraversion and conscientiousness, a moderate level of agreeableness and openness and a low neuroticism level among financial professionals. The results show a significant association between neuroticism, extraversion, openness and all behavioral biases except anchoring bias. The neuroticism trait has a statistically significant relationship with all behavioral biases examined, whereas agreeableness and conscientiousness traits lack a significant association with behavioral biases. The openness trait is associated with many emotional biases and cognitive heuristics, while the extraversion trait has a significantly positive relationship with availability bias.

Future researchers could analyze primary (survey) and secondary investor data from brokerage houses. Using a larger sample could provide more generalizable findings. Researchers could also consider other aspects of investment decision-making using various asset classes. Understanding financial professionals' personality traits and behavioral biases could help them develop strategies to suit client needs.

This study provides the first comprehensive examination of the association between personality traits and behavioral biases of Indian financial professionals.

This chapter provides an overview of the explanations and factors affecting dividend policy. This study employs a systematic literature review approach to review a large sample of studies related to the dividend puzzle. Although the analysis reveals mixed evidence involving the theories and determinants of dividend policy, some determinants appear in numerous studies. However, no consensus exists on an optimal dividend to resolve the dividend puzzle, and the authors propose a model to deal with the same. When examining dividend policy, researchers should consider the firm, market, behavior, and other determinants. When making significant dividend or stock decisions, managers and shareholders should also contemplate the factors, interactions, inadequacies, and consequences. Future researchers should strive to take a more comprehensive view when resolving the dividend puzzle. This study provides a current and complete picture of dividend policy's available theories and empirical determinants. Its significant contribution is identifying some of the more consistently essential determinants of dividend policy while proposing a holistic model to address the prevailing dividend dilemma.

The purpose of this paper is to examine corporate finance practices in the frontier market of Morocco and compare the practices used by Moroccan companies to those in other countries. It focuses primarily on capital budgeting and real options. The study also examines whether corporate finance practices used in Morocco are consistent with more theoretically superior techniques.

The study uses a mail questionnaire to gather data from chief financial officers and other senior executives of Casablanca Stock Exchange (CSE) listed companies.

Moroccan managers generally view the internal rate of return, accounting rate of return, and payback method as more important than the theoretically superior net present value. Few of the responding firms use real options when making capital budgeting decisions. They tend to use less sophisticated techniques to evaluate investment opportunities and calculate the cost of capital than their counterparts in developed countries. The most frequently used techniques by CSE-listed companies to estimate the cost of equity capital are the cost of debt plus an equity risk premium and the accounting return on equity. CSE-listed companies rely heavily on management’s subjective judgment to estimate cash flows.

Despite a 40 percent response rate, the number of responses did not permit examining whether differences in firm size, industry, educational background, and other characteristics affect the results. Although non-response bias is a potential limitation, test results show no statistically significant differences between the responding and non-responding companies on any of the five characteristics analyzed. These findings lessen concern about potential non-response bias. Given that the findings relate to a frontier market, they are most likely generalizable to similar countries in the Middle East and North Africa region.

The findings may be useful to various parties including corporate managers, boards of directors, and financial analysts. Given that investment decisions affect shareholder wealth, understanding the practices used by corporate managers is crucial in deciding what projects to undertake. This research raises awareness for management to review their corporate finance practices, compare them with their peers, and examine whether these techniques are aligned with proper allocation of resources and value maximization.

Overall, the findings imply that Moroccan firms have room to improve their corporate finance practices. Failing to do so could have serious implications ranging from the inefficient allocation of resources in the economy to the destruction of shareholder value.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the most comprehensive study using survey methodology to investigate corporate finance practices in Morocco. It provides new insights on such topics as capital budgeting, capital structure, cost of capital estimation, and real option techniques.

Managerial finance (MF) started publication in 1975 and celebrated its 45th anniversary in 2019. The purpose of this study is to provide a bibliometric analysis of MF between 1996 and 2019.

This study uses the Scopus database to analyze the most frequent authors in MF along with their affiliated institutions and countries. It also identifies the most often cited MF articles. This study uses bibliometric indicators to analyze productivity and stature of MF. It also uses such tools as bibliographic coupling, keyword analysis and coauthorship analysis to analyze MF. Further, the study provides a temporal analysis of MF publishing across different ownership periods.

MF publishes between 60 and 70 articles each year and its number of citations steadily grows. Although contributors to the journal come from around the globe, they most often are affiliated with the United States, the United Kingdom and Greece. Temporal analysis of journal's themes reveals that it has expanded its scope from accounting research to a much wider array of finance topics. Bibliographic coupling network analysis shows that major themes published in MF involve stock markets, corporate governance, banking, financial decision-making and initial public offerings.

Due to the unavailability of bibliometric data, the analysis excludes an analysis of MF between 1975 and 1995.

This study provides the first overview of the MF's publication and citation trends as well as its thematic structure. It also suggests future directions that the journal might take.

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.