Relationship Between Corporate Governance and Dividends: Outcome vs. Substitute Model

Abstract

The article discusses the relationship between dividend policy and the quality of corporate governance. On the one hand, decisions on payout policy can be viewed as a mechanism for resolving agency conflict or substitutes for best corporate governance practices, on the other hand, the quality of corporate governance itself is a determining factor in corporate financial decisions. Empirical literature fids proof for both types of the relationship. This paper aims to analyze different explanations of mixed results. We find a set of factors that can affect the link between corporate governance quality and dividend payouts. We show that in some cases substitution effect can dominate the payout policy, but the more often indicators tend to increase Outcome effect with the increase in their values. Positive addition of operational margin and beta as well as negative effects of ROA and firm size do not contradict to the shareholder’s interests and support the idea that dividends work in combination with corporate governance practices to meet the needs.

Keywords: agency conflict, corporate governance, payout policy, panel data, Tobit-model

JEL Classification: G34, G35