外文翻译---从管理视角再次审视过去的股利政策(编辑修改稿)

外文翻译---从管理视角再次审视过去的股利政策(编辑修改稿)内容摘要：

hat managers as insiders choose dividend payment levels and dividend increases to signal private information 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 firm39。 s stock is below its intrinsic value. The increased dividend payment serves as a credible signal when other firms that do not have 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 (2020). A second explanation for paying dividends is taxpreference theory. Favorable tax treatment on capital gains (lower capital gains tax rate and deferral of capital gains tax) should cause investors to prefer nondividendpaying stocks. Tests of this taxpreference explanation for paying or not paying dividends take two forms .According to Brennan39。 s (1970) version of the capital asset pricing model, dividendpaying stocks must offer higher pretax returns than nondividendpaying stocks, all else equal. Brennan39。 s empirical tests, however, are mixed. Also, Black and Scholes(1974) find no evidence of this tax effect, while Litzenberger and Ramaswamy (1979) and Kalay and Michaely (1993) find evidence that pretax returns are related to dividend yield. Other studies examine the exdividend date price drop. Favorable capital gains tax treatment could cause the price drop to be less than the dividend payment and cause investors to prefer Non dividendpaying stocks. Empirical evidence on this matter is also inconclusive. For example, Elton and Gruber (1970) find an exdividend date price drop that is less than the dividend amount, but Michaely (I 991) finds an exdividend date price drop equal to the dividend payment. Another explanation for why firms might pay dividends is based on agency relationships between various claimholders of the firm. Easterbrook (1984) argues that firms pay dividends to help reduce the agency costs associated with the separation of ownership and control. By paying dividends, managers must raise funds more frequently in the capital markets where they are subjected to scrutiny and the disciplining effects of investment professionals. Jensen (1986) makes a similar agencytheory argument where managers pay dividends to reduce the firm39。 s discretionary free cash flow that could be used to fund suboptimal investments that benefit managers but diminish shareholder wealth. Rozeff (1982), Lang and Litzenberger (1989), Agrawal and Jayaraman (1994), and Jensen, Solberg, and Zorn (1992) provide empirical support for these agency explanations for paying dividends. Finally, the birdinthehand explanation asserts that paying higher dividends increases firm value because dividends represent a sure thing while future share price appreciation is uncertain. Miller and Modigliani (1961) refer to this as the birdinthehand fallacy. Bhattacharya (1979) correctly argues that the riskiness of a project39。 s cash flows determines a firm’s risk and an increase in dividend payout today will simply result in an equivalent drop in the stock39。 s exdividend price. Thus, increasing the dividend today will not increase a firm’s value by reducing the riskiness of future cash flows. Although virtually no empirical support exists for the birdinthehand explanation for paying dividends, we want to determine if managers39。 views are consistent with previous theoretical and empirical research. Research Questions and Empirical Predictions We address three major research questions in this study. First, what views do NASDAQ managers from dividendpaying firms have on the dividendsetting process? We expect that our survey respondents strongly agree with statements involving Lintner39。 s (1956) model on dividend poli。