1、PDF外文：http:/ 共 页 ， 第 1 页 装 订 线 &n
2、bsp; 附录 原文 : Dividend payouts: Evidence from U.S. bank holding companiesin the context of the financial crisis Jos Filipe Abreu, Mohamed Azzim Gulamhussen Abstract We study dividend payouts of 462 U.S. bank hold
3、ing companies before and during the 200709 financial crisis. Fama and French (2001) characteristics (size, profitability and growth opportunities) explain dividend payouts before and during the financial crisis. The agency cost hypothesis explains dividend payouts before and during (more pronouncedl
4、y) the financial crisis. The signaling hypothesis explains dividend payouts during the financial crisis. Regulatory pressure was ineffective in limiting dividend payouts by undercapitalized banks before the financial crisis. Our findings have implications for corporate finance and governance theorie
5、s, and also for the regulatory reforms that are being discussed among policymakers. 1. Introduction Researchers apply corporate finance and governance theories to financial firms on the grounds of the inherent interplay of interests of a wider set of stakeholders (depositors and regulators, as well
6、as shareholders and managers), which make their agency and governance problems more complex, and the relevance of financial firms for the good functioning and soundness of modern financial systems (see, among others, Anderson and Campbell, 2004； Brook et al., 2000). The financial crisis has further
7、enhanced the interest in the application of corporate finance and governance theories due to the unique macroeconomic context and the regulatory shift which is believed to have hit financial firms the most (see, for example, Erkens et al., 2012). We contribute to this emerging strand in the literatu
8、re by studying banks' dividend payout decisions before and during the financial crisis. Of the several corporate finance and governance issues that are attracting the attention of scholars, dividend policy is receiving significant attention, particularly from regulators and investors. The recent
9、 proposals to increase oversight of the dividend payouts by the Federal Reserve Board (FRB, 2011) and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS, 2011) point towards the increasing regulatory relevance of banks' dividend payout policy. Forcing banks to plowback their earnings may however h
10、ave the unintended consequence of reducing their ability to both signal their future growth prospects to suppliers of debt and equity, and reduce agency conflicts of their managers with dispersed shareholders. Our paper sheds critical light on the tension between the dividend payout decisions (befor
11、e and) during the financial crisis by explicitly considering 共 页 ， 第 2 页 装 订
12、; 线 the major regulatory shifts that occurred during this period. Dividend policy in the context of financial firms has been addressed to some extent previously. We summarize t
13、he main studies in Table 1. For example, Filbeck and Mullineaux (1993), Collins et al. (1994) and Boldin and Leggett (1995) test the signaling hypothesis and the evidence largely indicates that dividends are used as a signaling mechanism by banks. These studies do not account for the influence of re
14、gulatory pressure. An exception though is Theis and Dutta (2009) who in their study on the influence of the inside ownership on dividend payout control for the level of capitalization of banks. We extend these studies by considering the Fama and French (2001) characteristics of dividend payers, and
15、the agency cost hypothesis alongside the previously tested signaling hypothesis. Table 1 Selected literature on the determinants of dividends. This table synthesizes selected literature on the determinants of dividends for U.S. bank holding companies. We test four hypotheses in t
16、he present study: (i) the applicability of Fama and French's (2001) characteristics of dividend payers (size, profitability and growth opportunities)； (ii) the signaling hypothesis, which states that dividends are used as an 共 页 ， 第 3 页
17、 装 订 线 indi
18、cator of future prospects； (iii) the agency cost hypothesis, which states that dividends counterbalance the increased need for monitoring associated with independent banks； and (iv) the regulatory pressure hypothesis, which states that undercapitalized banks tend to retain earnings rather than pay d
19、ividends. The analysis covers two distinct macroeconomic environments: before and during the financial crisis. The sample includes 462 U.S. bank holding companies and contains 435 observations made before the financial crisis (i.e., from 2004 to 2006) and 441 observations made during the financial c
20、risis (i.e., from 2007 to 2009), for a total of 876 observations. Focusing on the U.S. provides a large dataset, while restricting the sample to bank holding companies reduces the problems associated with unobserved heterogeneity. 3. Sample, variables and descriptive statistics We collected fi
21、rm-level data from Bankscope for U.S. listed bank holding companies with minimum total assets of 100 million USD, which yielded 462 institutions. Banks that entered bankruptcy during the financial crisis were not considered. Our sample spans two distinct macroeconomic environments: the period before
22、 the financial crisis, from 2004 to 2006 (435 observations), and the period during the financial crisis, from 2007 to 2009 (441 observations). The final sample is an unbalanced panel with a total of 876 observations. We used the dividend payout (dividend payout) as the dependent variable and constru
23、cted it by averaging the dividend-to-total asset ratio for each reference period. We used total assets to scale dividends to ensure that the results were not driven by stock price and earning volatility associated with the financial crisis. We focus on the characteristics of regular dividend payouts
24、 rather than on the prediction of the next year's dividend. Therefore, we use an averaging period that is longer than one year. We opt a three-year averaging period for two main reasons. First, this choice avoids the impact of the 2003 tax cut on dividend payouts in the U.S. (see, among others,
25、Brown et al., 2007). Second, a three-year period covers the time span of the entire financial crisis (2007 to 2009). The signaling hypothesis states that banks with positive future growth opportunities (expected growth) are expected to pay out higher dividends to signal their banks' prospects an
26、d increase their potential to attract debt and equity financing when required； therefore a positive relationship between expected growth and dividend payout is expected. Conversely, just like historical growth, banks with positive future growth opportunities (expected growth) will plowback their ear
27、nings to avoid costly debt and equity financing； therefore a negative relationship is expected between expected growth and dividend payout. Thus, the relationship between expected growth and dividend payout can be positive or negative. We measured expected growth through the ratio of market-to-book value of equity at the end of the observation period. The signaling hypothesis cannot be rejected if the coefficient associated with expected growth is positive and statistically significant. The agency cost hypothesis states that dividends counterbalance the increased need
