Dividend policy of the listed company is one of the three core problems in modern company's financial activities. Whether to distribute the dividend or how much to distribute connects with the company's financing policy and the balance between retaining the earning and return to the shareholders, even it plays a very important role in reducing the agency costs in developed capital market. So it is quite crucial to the company's development.There are many factors that influence the dividend policy. Based on the law and logical analyze, this paper focuses on the relationship between the dividend policy and the ownership structure. Ownership structure in China is very different from other countries. It is designed on some political purpose, what makes company's dividend policy is quite special from the very beginning. Therefore, study dividend policy from ownership structure makes sense.Furthermore, the split-share structure reform is carrying on in China; listed company's ownership structure is facing great change. So study ownership structure and dividend policy's change in this period is very meaningful.Firstly, this paper backdates the dividend theories skeleton; choose agency theory as the theoretic analyze instruments after carefully analyzing. Then combining America and Japan's dividend policy practice, prove that agency theory is a very useful instrument. Afterwards, analyze the relationship between ownership structure and dividend policy in China with agency theory. Then use the LOGIT regression to study the dividend type, use the linear regression model to study the dividend level. After that, this paper does some research on ownership structure and dividend policy's change during the split-share structure reform period.This paper's main research conclusion is that ownership structure determines the agency problems that listed company is facing; different agency problems determine different dividend policy choice. The special ownership structure in our country determines two types agency problems, one is the conflict between the tradable shareholders and the nontradable shareholders, and the other is the insider control problem. The two agency problems interpret dividend policy's specialty in our country. And the split-share structure reform is very helpful to resolve these agency problems, so it is promising to look forward the dividend policy will play its own part in listed company and capital market sooner or later. |