1、外文文献翻译译文 一、 外文原文 原文 ： Dividend policy in Switzerland Dividend policy has long been a subject of research and debate. There are many theoretical and empirical results describing the decisions companies make in this area. At the same time, however, there is no generally accepted model describing payou
2、t policy. Moreover, empirical findings are often contradictory or difficult to interpret in light of the theory. In the ideal world of Miller and Modigliani (1961), dividends are irrelevant. The value of a firm is given by its investment opportunities. Dividends are just the residual, and investors
3、faced with consumption shocks can always get their own “homemade” dividends. In “real life”, however, dividend policy is one of the main concerns for managers and investors. Empirical studies have generally found that dividend increases are considered good news by investors, while dividend decreases
4、 lead to negative reactions. Several explanations for the existence and importance of dividends have been suggested over the last decades. Dividends could be used as signals for the actual position of a firm. Companies could communicate their better quality by paying higher dividends: low-quality fi
5、rms will not be able to imitate them since dividends involve costs in terms of foregone investment, taxes, or the need to attract external capital. Agency theory suggests that dividends may be a way to reduce the overinvestment problem or a means to keep firms in the capital markets. Dividends may a
6、lso be used to attract institutional investors, who are better monitors and prefer dividends for regulatory reasons. Behavioral aspects, such as self-control, fairness, or regret aversion, may also be important parts of the picture. Each of the main theories concerning dividend policy has found at l
7、east some support in actual data. However, empirical research has also revealed weaknesses of these explanations, and a broad consensus concerning the “best” theory of corporate payout seems far away. We may know more about the “dividend puzzle”, but we are still without a definite solution. The pre
8、sent paper examines some of the characteristics of dividend policy using Swiss data. The first part presents factors that influence variations in dividend payments across companies at a given point in time. The second part analyzes the changes in dividends over time. The cross-sectional analysis for
9、 the 20002003 periods compares the characteristics of dividend payers and non-payers. It then identifies several determinants of the differences between dividend payers in terms of payout ratios and dividend yields. The results show that companies that are less risky, larger, with lower growth oppor
10、tunities, and with lower leverage tend to pay higher dividends. Institutions show a preference for dividend-paying companies, but there is little evidence that they prefer higher payout ratios or dividend yields. Quite interestingly, the factor that turns out to have the strongest influence on payou
11、t ratios and dividend yields is price volatility. This may be interpreted as a sign that companies with higher earnings uncertainty are less likely to pay high dividends - or to pay dividends at all. Dividends per share are much more widespread as a headline indicator of dividend policy. The final s
12、ection of the paper looks at changes in (split-adjusted) dividends per share and seeks to determine whether these changes have informational content. The results show that dividend increases follow periods of high earnings and cash flow growth, whereas dividend decreases follow declines. A closer lo
13、ok at the data reveals that there may nevertheless be some information conveyed by dividend changes. The average future level of earnings after dividend increases is significantly higher than the mean over the previous few years. The earnings of companies that decrease the dividend decline slightly
14、and remain at a persistently low level around the dividend change. An important class of models is based on the idea that the assumption of perfect information may be unrealistic and that dividends can be used as signals of firm quality. Bhattacharya (1979) builds a two-period model with two types o
15、f firms. Investments are made during the first period； their expected profitability is known to management, but not to outside investors. In order to signal the quality of their investment, the managers of “good” firms (managers are assumed to act in the interest of initial shareholders) will commit
16、 to paying high dividends in the second period. Since attracting outside financing (during the second period) is expensive due to transaction costs, “low-quality” firms will be unable to imitate “high-quality” ones. The alternative models of Miller and Rock (1985) and John and Williams (1985) consid
17、er the cost of dividends in terms of foregone investments and taxes, respectively. The signaling models provide an explanation for the positive stock price reaction to the announcement of dividend increases or initiations. However, the empirical evidence on this hypothesis is mixed. In an early stud
18、y, Watts (1973) found that unexpected changes in earnings and unexpected changes in dividends were related, although he remained skeptical about the possibility to make money by exploiting this regularity. Penman (1983) finds that “both dividend announcements and managements earnings forecasts posse
19、ss information about managements expectations”. Using a sample of dividend initiations and omissions, Healy (1988) find that dividend initiations and omissions have informational content (the change in earnings is related to announcement-day returns, even when controlling for previous earnings), but
20、 this only holds for year 1. Yoon and Starks (1995) and Denis et al(1994) show that dividend change announcements are linked to revisions in analysts forecasts of current income. Based on the mixed results for the signaling theory, Grullon et al (2002) suggest that, rather than an increase in profit
21、ability, dividend increases could reflect a decrease in risk the “maturity hypothesis”. They find that while profitability declines following a dividend increase, systematic risk in a three-factor Fame French model decreases. They argue that as firms become more mature (and therefore less risky, but with lower growth opportunities), they will be more likely to pay large
