| This dissertation consists of two essays. The first essay examines how corporate payout policies and debt can be interchangeably used as substitutes in controlling free cash flow (FCF) problems. The roles of retained earnings/total equity (RE/TE) and various risk measures, such as equity beta, cash flow beta, and volatility are also analyzed in the choice of different payout policies as substitute for debt. Evidence suggests that firms with lower debt tend to payout more to control for free cash flow problems, and this relation is mainly driven by dividends, suggesting that dividends are more direct substitute to debt in controlling FCF problems. Also, the results support that RE/TE significantly affects dividends, but the substitution effect induced by FCF problems is unaffected by the inclusion of RE/TE. Furthermore, contrary to the recent literature, when leverage is considered, the effect of FCF problem on dividends dominates the effect of RE/TE. Therefore, FCF problem still plays a very important role in explaining firm's payouts. Furthermore while equity beta and RE/TE have symmetric effects on dividends and repurchases, cash flow beta has asymmetric effects. Cash flow beta weakens the degree of substitution between dividends and leverage in favor of repurchases. Even after controlling for RE/TE, size and equity beta, cash flow beta has a significant explanatory power for a firm's dividend payments.;The second essay examines the behavior of managers who are endowed with executive stock options and investigates a possible distortion of corporate payout policy and its fixing mechanism. Executive managers awarded with large stock options may have an incentive to substitute repurchases for dividends in their payout policy and this may results in an agency problem between managers and shareholders. Surprisingly, dividend protection that can fix this distorted managerial incentive by compensating managers for the amount of dividend payments is rarely adopted in US. Various hypotheses are tested to explain the observed low dividend protection rate. First, the accounting consideration based on the EPS dilution effect is studied. Second, the relationship between executive options and dividends is estimated after controlling for possible endogeneity issues using structural models. Third, investors' preferences between dividends and repurchases over the past history are studied controlling for various firm characteristics. Evidence suggests that while option grants makes executives more likely to pay out through repurchases, there is a concurring trend in investors' preferences. Taken together, the aligned preferences of managers and investors towards repurchases can help explain the observed low dividend protection rates. |
