A Liquidity-based Resolution to the Dividend Puzzle
Yijing Wang
MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany
Abstract:
Contrary to the renowned irrelevance theory proposed by Modigliani and Miller in 1961, empirical evidence suggests that assets that pay dividends command a price premium, despite the fact that dividend payments are generally taxed more heavily than capital gains. In this paper, I use a monetary-search model and propose a new resolution to this puzzle, based on the idea that the price premium of dividend assets arises due to the superior liquidity role played by dividends compared to returns in the form of capital gain. As dividend is virtually identical to money in facilitating transactions, it helps stockholders avoid selling their assets at an undesirable price in financial markets with frictions and trading delays. The paper provides a number of theoretical results that find support in the data. I also study firms’ optimal decision to pay dividends, and show that an increase in the interest rate can hurt the economy not only through the traditional channel, i.e., reduction in real money holdings, but also through the reduction in aggregate R&D activities.
Keywords: Dividend Puzzle; Search and Matching; Asset Liquidity; Over-the-Counter Markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E40 E44 E50 G11 G12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-11-14
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge and nep-fdg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)
Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/115560/1/MPRA_paper_115560.pdf original version (application/pdf)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:115560
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().