A Study On Cash Dividend Distribution Of Listed Companies In China

Dividend is a way of repayment to shareholders for a company, it not only relates shareholders' economic interest, but also relates company's future development. The dividend policy has been studied by the academic and the practical realm. Since Miller and Modigliani published their classical paper in 1961, the Western academic realm has had a lot of theoretical productions, but not yet obtains the consistent result until now,"puzzle of the dividend"unresolved. In recent years, dividend distribution of listed companies also became one of capital market hot topics in China. So this article takes the cash dividend distribution problem as research content.The signal theory and the agency theory are two main theories to explain the dividend policy. For signal theory, dividend can signal company's future earnings to investors. However, agency theory thinks dividend policy can solve the agency problem which caused by the separation of ownership and control rights. This article has first analyzed the serviceability of above two kinds of theories in our country, then based on the analysis, I propose research hypotheses combining the domestic and foreign research, and establish the return models. Using the information disclosed by the annual(2002-2004) report of listed firms, I utilize he descriptive statistics and the regression analysis to discuss respectively the relations of the cash dividend and the ownership structure, the cash dividend and the income, the cash dividend and the free cash flow.This article mainly obtains the following research conclusion: Cash dividend will increase along with the enhancement of ownership proportion of the first stockholder, decrease along with the enhancement of circulation stock proportion; The second stockholder has the dual character in the treatment of cash dividend manner; The enhancement of the proportion of the second stockholder to the first stockholder, may restrict the tunneling behavior of the first stockholder ; The cash dividend is mainly influenced by annual earning, less by retained earnings; The cash dividend change does not have the signal transmission function; Listed companies has"the dividend smoothly"phenomenon; The cash dividend has nothing to do with the free cash flow of the company. Finally, based the above conclusion, I put forward the corresponding policy proposals: Optimizing ownership structure, perfecting company governs mechanism; Strengthening market surveillance and management, perfecting smallinvestors' benefit protection mechanism; Improving listed company operating idea, constituting scientific dividend policy.