Returns for Dividend-Paying and Non Dividend Paying Firms

Yufen Fu and George W. Blazenko

The International Journal of Business and Finance Research, 2015, vol. 9, issue 2, 1-20

Abstract: In this paper, we compare the equity returns of dividend-paying and non-dividend paying firms. We find no unconditional return difference even though non-dividend paying firms have many characteristics that suggest high risk. Equivalently, because non-dividend paying firms have high risk-metrics, their returns are abnormally low compared with dividend-paying firms. The reason for these anomalies is that a larger fraction of non-dividend paying firms are in financial distress and, despite high distress-risk and high growth-leverage, firms in financial distress have low returns from high volatility that decreases the optionsleverage of equity. Removing firms in financial distress, returns for non-dividend paying firms increase relative to dividend-paying firms and abnormal returns disappear. We argue that part of the reason that firms in financial-distress have high volatility that leads to low returns is managerial risk-shifting that takes form as unexpectedly high capital expenditure rates.

Keywords: Equity Returns; Dividends; Financial Distress; Volatility; Growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G12 G32 G33 G35 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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