1、本科毕业论文（设计） 外 文 翻 译 原文： Revisiting Managerial Perspectives on Dividend Policy We survey managers of Nasdaq firms that consistently pay cash dividends to determine their views about dividend policy,the relationship between dividend policy and value,and four common explanations for paying dividends.The
2、 evidence shows that managers stress the importance of maintaining dividend continuity and widely agree that changes in dividends affect firm value.Managers give the strongest support to a signaling explanation for paying dividends,weak to little support to the tax-preference and agency cost explana
3、tions,and no support to the bird-in-the-hand explanation.The study provides new evidence about how managers view dividend life cycles and residual dividend policy. One of the more puzzling issues in corporate finance involves dividends. Miller and Modigliani (1961) provide a compelling and widely ac
4、cepted argument for dividend irrelevance in a world with perfect capital markets. Many years later, Miller (1986) recognized that the observed preference for cash dividends is one of the “ soft spots in the current body of theory.” So why do corporations pay dividends, and why do investors care? Bla
5、ck (1976) once described this issue as a dividend “ puzzle” with “ pieces that just don t seem to fit.” To help explain this puzzle, financial economists developed various theoriessignaling, taxpreference, agency costs, and bird-in-the-hand explanations. The profusion of theories led Ang (1987, p. 5
6、5) to observe, “ Thus, we have moved from a position of not enough good reasons to explain why dividends are paid to one of too many.” Advocates of behavioral finance, such as Shefrin and Statman (1984), introduced concepts such as prospect theory and mental accounting to explain why investors like
7、dividends. Statman (1997) contends that solving the dividend puzzle is impossible while ignoring the patterns of normal investor behavior. Today, corporate managers areleft with a vast and often conflicting body of research about dividends. One way to enhance our understanding of why corporations pa
8、y dividends is to examine the views of managers who are responsible for making such decisions. Past fieldwork and surveys have provided important insights into how managers determine their firm s dividend payouts and their views about various dividend policy issues. For example, Lintner (1956) condu
9、cted the seminal field study about the determination of dividend policy. Other researchers including Baker, Farrelly, and Edelman (1985) and Baker and Powell (1999) surveyed managers to obtain their views about dividend policy. Such studies complement other types of empirical research on dividend po
10、licy. Our study examines how managers view dividend policy but uses a different data set to extend and refine the scope of previous survey research. Specifically, we survey corporate managers of Nasdaq firms that consistently pay cash dividends to determine their views about dividend policy, the rel
11、ationship between dividend policy and value, and four common explanations for paying dividends signaling, tax-preference, agency costs, and bird-in-the-hand arguments. Our motivation for conducting this study is to determine whether the evidence simply reaffirms what we already know or provides new
12、insights about dividend policy. The study is timely given evidence by Fama and French (2001) of the declining incidence of dividend payers, which not only reflects the changing characteristics of dividend payers but also their lower propensity to pay dividends. In this study, we do not focus on the
13、views about dividend policy of managers from the“ typical” Nasdaq firm because most Nasdaq firms either pay no dividends or pay dividends on an irregular basis. Instead, we investigate the views of a subset of Nasdaq firms, namely, those that consistently pay cash dividends. The fact that most Nasda
14、q firms do not pay dividends is not surprising given their characteristics. As Damodaran (1999) notes, a firm s dividend policy tends to follow the firm s life cycle. During the introduction and rapid expansion stages, firms typically pay no or very low dividends. Such firms characterize a large por
15、tion of firms trading on Nasdaq. Our study differs from previous research on dividend policy in several ways. First, unlike prior fieldwork and surveys that focus only on NYSE-listed firms from a few industries, we study managers from dividend-paying Nasdaq firms from numerous industries. Michel (19
16、79) and Baker(1988) present evidence that dividend policies vary across industries. Our rationale for examining Nasdaq firms rests on the belief that the views of Nasdaq managers may differ from those of NYSE-listed firms because of different firm characteristics such as size.1 Second, we investigat
17、e several areas not examined in previous surveys such as views about historical patterns of dividends, dividend life cycle, and residual dividend policy. Finally, unlike most research that focuses on a single explanation of why companies pay dividends, we examine multiple explanations. By taking thi
18、s approach, we can assess the relative importance of different reasons for paying dividends based on the level of agreement or disagreement with various statements involving each explanation. The finance literature contains four standard explanations for paying dividendssignaling,tax-preference, age
19、ncy costs, and bird-in-the-hand. The signaling, or asymmetric information,models for paying dividends, developed by Bhattacharya (1979), John and Williams (1985), and Miller and Rock (1985), suggest that managers as insiders choose dividend payment levels and dividend increases to signal private inf
20、ormation to investors. Managers have an incentive to signal this private information to the investment public when they believe that the current market value of their firm s stock is below its intrinsic value. The increased dividend payment serves as a credible signal when other firms that do not ha
21、ve favorable inside information cannot mimic the dividend increase without unduly increasing the chance of later incurring a dividend cut. Strong support exists for the signaling explanation including research by Aharony and Swary (1980),Asquith and Mullins (1983), Kalay and Lowenstein (1986), Healey and Palepu (1988), and Nissim and Ziv (2001). A second explanation for paying dividends is tax-preference theory. Favorable tax treatment on capital gains (lower capital gains tax rate and deferral of capital gains tax) should cause investors to prefer nondividend-paying stocks. Tests of this
