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投資機會和投資者保護機制對控股股東派息的影響
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costs of insider expropriation by providing minority shareholders with legal powers
(Shleifer and Vishny, 1997). Thus, in countries with good legal investor protection,
controlling shareholders find it more difficult and costly to expropriate from minority
investors, which leads outside investors to rely more on legal protection and to become
less alert to expropriation. Previous studies find that strong legal investor protection is
associated with less expropriation from minority shareholders. For example, countries
with a high level of investor protection are found to have higher corporate valuations (La
Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer, and Vishny, 2002; Lemmon and Lins, 2003), larger
capital markets (La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer, and Vishny, 1997), lower value
control premiums (Nenova, 2003), less earnings management (Leuz, Nanda, and Wysocki,
2003; Haw et al., 2004), less demand for analyst cash flow forecasts and coverage by
financial analysts (Lang, Lins, and Miller, 2004; DeFond and Hung, 2007; Haw, Ho, Hu,
and Wu, 2010), and greater price informativeness about future earnings (Chu and Wu,
2009, 2011; Haw, Hu, Lee, and Wu, 2012).
The legal protection of investors gives minority shareholders the legal right to
demand dividends and put pressure on controlling shareholders to distribute dividends or
returns on an investment. La Porta et al. (2000) reports a positive relationship between
legal investor protection and dividend payouts, which suggests that firms in common law
countries with strong legal investor protection pay higher dividends than those in civil law
countries with weak legal investor protection, especially when investment opportunities
are limited. Fama and French (2001) show that firms with a low potential for growth are
more likely to pay dividends than retain profits.
DeAngelo et al. (2006) explain that the avoidance of agency costs plays an important
role in dividend decisions. Faccio et al. (2001) argue that firms that are controlled by
controlling shareholders pay a consistent stream of dividends regardless of their need for
investment funds, which implies that the “divergence” force is dominant. In contrast, in
countries in which investor protection is strong and minority shareholders exercise their
power rationally, controlling shareholders with a large control divergence have less need
to mask expropriation and thus pay lower dividends, especially in firms that have good
investment opportunities. This suggests that shareholder power and the “divergence” force
cancel each other out. Accordingly, we predict that the positive relationship between
control divergence and dividends that is documented by Faccio et al. (2001) may not
explain the dividend policies of controlling shareholders in countries with strong legal
investor protection, especially for firms with good growth potential. Our alternative