The Effect Of The Board Characteristics On Listed Company’s Cash Dividend

Cash dividend policy of listed companies is a way of income distribution, and studies of cash dividend have already attracted the attention of scholars in the field of finance for long. Compared with mature capital markets in developed western countries, our country stated to study this subject later. Our country has a special market environment and enterprise system, which makes the cash dividend policy of listed companies in our country complex. So we do not completely copy the western theories. In accordance with “the law of the People’s Republic of China”, the board has the authority to make the company’s profit distribution plan and make up for the loss, so the company’s board of directors in the dividend policy of listed companies play a key role in the process. So far most people study the relationship between the board characteristics and corporate performance, but few study the effect of board characteristics to cash dividend distribution. This article will research it in the perspective of agency costs.This paper chooses 585 listed companies that have been listing from 2003 to 2013 in Shanghai A shares as research samples, and uses the fixed effects model regression analyzing the balance panel data, in order to study the influence of eight board characteristics to cash dividend distribution level. In addition, the cash dividend payment level are different between different industries, so this article will study this phenomenon by category from Csmar. In conclusion: the cash dividend payment level exists significant difference between different industries. The board scale and the level of cash dividend payment is inverted u-shaped relationship. Commercial industry and industrial enterprise are very significant in this relationship, but the real estate companies and utilities companies is not significant; The board independence and the level of cash dividend payment has significant positive correlation. But comparing industry, only commercial and industrial enterprise pass the hypothesis testing; Female directors scale and cash dividend is significant u-shaped relationship in the overall sample, basically confirming that the women directors can promote the payment of cash dividend. But it is only significant positive correlation in industrial enterprise, while real estate enterprise shows a significant negative correlation. Others have no significant relationship. Finding in the comparison of industries, the board governance is more mature in industrial enterprise, and has a more notable impact on the cash dividend distribution policy. However the rest of the industry’s board characteristics is not normal, there is still much room for improvement.