股利政策：争议问题【外文翻译】

原文：

Dividend policy: The Issues

1. Introduction

The determinants of dividend policy are a continuing puzzle, as noted by Black (1976). In this paper we review the major issues in dividend policy and relate them to some of the themes explored in companion papers in this volume. The paper is d ivided into five sections. Section 2 surveys the literature on the information signalling properties of dividends. Section 3 discusses some tax issues related to dividend policy and section 4 draws on some agency costs explanations for dividend payments. The conclusion draws together the arguments and highlights some of the unresolved issues.

2. Dividend policy and information signalling

In their classic paper, Miller and Modigliani (1961) provide a cogent argument for the claim that dividend policy does not affect the value of the firm. They assume a world without transactions costs and taxes, a given investment policy and fully informed investors. In these circumstances it follows that "the irrelevance of dividend policy, given investment policy, is 'obvious, once you think of it'"(p.414). With a given level of investment, if a firm chooses to pay a dollar more of dividend now, it will have to raise an extra dollar of external finance to support its investment: The higher current dividend to existing shareholders will be exactly offset by a decrease in future dividends as the firm must now pay dividends to its new shareholders. In the absence of tax effects and transactions costs and given full information, the value of the firm to existing shareholders will not be affected by its dividend policy. Dividend policy is therefore irrelevant.

Miller and Modigliani (1961) note that the "informational content" of dividends is assumed absent from their model. They note, however, that in practice "where a firm has adopted a policy of dividend stabilization with a long-established and generally appreciated 'target payout ratio', investors are likely to (and have a good reason to) interpret a change in dividend rate as a change in management's views of

future profit prospects for the firm". This echoed the stance recorded by Lintner (1956) in his survey of U.S. company practices which led him to develop the 'partial adjustment' model of dividend beha-viour. Lintner suggests that the primary determinant of dividend payments is the relationship between the existing dividend rate and "that rate which would constitute a target pay-out of current and reasonably forseeable profits".A number of different interpretations of Lintner's behavioural model are possible. One interpretation is that management signals changes in their perception of the company's long-term profitability by changes in dividend payments.

A paper by Allen, in this volume, assesses the use of target payout ratios by a sample of British companies, drawing on evidence obtained in a questionnaire survey. The results are consistent with the implications of the Lintner model. Respondents report that a desire to maintain stable dividends and the company's recent dividend history are the main factors influencing target payouts.

The importance of the use of payout levels to signal changes in expectations of future earnings is also emphasized. The role of information signalling has been emphasized in recent theoretical work on dividend policy. Miller and Rock (1985) provide a formal model of the role of dividend policy under asymmetric information. They assume that firm's managers know more than outside investors about the true state of the firm's current earnings; both dividend payments and external financing will consequently have announcement effects as they provide information about the firm's sources and uses of funds that will enable the market to deduce the firm's current earnings. This estimate of current earnings can then be used to estimate expected future earnings and firm value. Unfortunately, this leads to the possibility that management may try to push up the share price in the short-run by over-generous dividend payments. Ultimately, the truth will be revealed but not before some investors have reaped an excess return by selling before the true information is revealed. Miller and Rock suggest a potential solution to this problem but at the expense of Fisher's criterion for optimal invest-ment. They provide a signalling equilibrium in which the dividend payout ratio is higher and real investment is lower than in the full information case. The above approach is consistent with the