Market Capitalization, Corporate Payouts, and Expected Returns
53 Pages Posted: 19 Mar 2018 Last revised: 17 Jun 2018
Date Written: June 10, 2018
Abstract
This paper examines the present value framework that links market capitalization to non-dividend cash flows (i.e., share repurchases and issuances) beyond the conventional price–dividend relationship. We show that total (dividend plus non-dividend) cash flows can account for a large fraction of both price and return variations by using tests of cross-equation restrictions on vector autoregression (VAR), impulse response functions, and variance decomposition of unexpected returns. These results come from the fact that total cash flow shocks exhibit a strong negative correlation with payout yield shocks. Non-dividend cash flows help to reconcile our findings with previous literature that prices move substantially relative to dividends.
Keywords: Asset Pricing; VAR; Impulse Response Function; Variance Decomposition
JEL Classification: C12; C32; G12
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation