An Empirical Study of Dividend Policies in Developing Countries

The main objective of this paper is to study dividend payout practices and identify determinants of dividend policies of developing countries in six major regions across the world, which have been receiving less attention compared to that of developed countries. This paper collects panel data of lis...

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Main Author: Chee, Yoong Chuan
Format: Dissertation (University of Nottingham only)
Language:English
Published: 2014
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/27347/
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author Chee, Yoong Chuan
author_facet Chee, Yoong Chuan
author_sort Chee, Yoong Chuan
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description The main objective of this paper is to study dividend payout practices and identify determinants of dividend policies of developing countries in six major regions across the world, which have been receiving less attention compared to that of developed countries. This paper collects panel data of listed firms in 25 developing countries as defined by World Bank, between the years of 2000 and 2011. In examining dividend practices of developing countries, it is found that more than 50 percent of firms in developing countries fall under the categories of “fixed” and “somewhat fixed”, which suggest that firms are paying stable dividends to attract investors. Besides, eight hypotheses were tested using Multiple Regression Analysis and the overall results show that leverage, profitability, risk, growth opportunities, free cash flow, tangibility and firm size are significantly associated with dividend while liquidity has no impact on the dividend policies of the developing countries. In addition, this study also finds that dividend determinants (except growth opportunities) of the developing countries are quite similar to that of the U.S. Generally, the results show that dividend policies of most of the countries are affected by different determinants at different levels of sensitivity, suggesting others country and environmental factors may contribute to the varying determinants in different countries. In a nutshell, this study concludes that there is no universal acceptable dividend theory to explain the dividend behavior of each country.
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spelling nottingham-273472017-10-19T13:59:08Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/27347/ An Empirical Study of Dividend Policies in Developing Countries Chee, Yoong Chuan The main objective of this paper is to study dividend payout practices and identify determinants of dividend policies of developing countries in six major regions across the world, which have been receiving less attention compared to that of developed countries. This paper collects panel data of listed firms in 25 developing countries as defined by World Bank, between the years of 2000 and 2011. In examining dividend practices of developing countries, it is found that more than 50 percent of firms in developing countries fall under the categories of “fixed” and “somewhat fixed”, which suggest that firms are paying stable dividends to attract investors. Besides, eight hypotheses were tested using Multiple Regression Analysis and the overall results show that leverage, profitability, risk, growth opportunities, free cash flow, tangibility and firm size are significantly associated with dividend while liquidity has no impact on the dividend policies of the developing countries. In addition, this study also finds that dividend determinants (except growth opportunities) of the developing countries are quite similar to that of the U.S. Generally, the results show that dividend policies of most of the countries are affected by different determinants at different levels of sensitivity, suggesting others country and environmental factors may contribute to the varying determinants in different countries. In a nutshell, this study concludes that there is no universal acceptable dividend theory to explain the dividend behavior of each country. 2014 Dissertation (University of Nottingham only) NonPeerReviewed application/pdf en https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/27347/1/CheeYoongChuan.pdf Chee, Yoong Chuan (2014) An Empirical Study of Dividend Policies in Developing Countries. [Dissertation (University of Nottingham only)] (Unpublished)
spellingShingle Chee, Yoong Chuan
An Empirical Study of Dividend Policies in Developing Countries
title An Empirical Study of Dividend Policies in Developing Countries
title_full An Empirical Study of Dividend Policies in Developing Countries
title_fullStr An Empirical Study of Dividend Policies in Developing Countries
title_full_unstemmed An Empirical Study of Dividend Policies in Developing Countries
title_short An Empirical Study of Dividend Policies in Developing Countries
title_sort empirical study of dividend policies in developing countries
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/27347/