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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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Table 2 presents the descriptive statistics on firm-level dividend payout ratios,
ultimate owner’s cash flow rights and cash flow-control divergence, the control variables
(firm- and country-level), and legal institutions. The ultimate owner’s mean (median)
proportion of cash flow rights (
Own
) is 23.54% (16.00%), which indicates that there are
only a few firms in which the ultimate owner’s cash flow rights are great, and that in half
of the sample firms the owner holds not more than 16%. The mean (median) cash flow-
control divergence is 19% (0%), which suggests that at least half of the largest ultimate
owners experience no discrepancy between their cash flow rights and voting rights.
However, there are some ultimate owners whose cash flow rights and voting rights diverge
greatly. The percentage of firms in the sample with a positive cash flow-control
divergence is 39.59%.
In terms of the country-level controls, Table 2 reports the average size of the
economy (
Ln(GNP)
) to be 9.81 with a range of 6.61 to 10.48. The average value of legal
reserves (
LRes
) is about 0.12 with a range of 0 to 1, and the average dividend tax
advantage (
Dta
) is 0.79 with a range of 0.56 to 1.08. In terms of the firm-specific controls,
the average sales growth rate in rank decile (
G
) is 4.5 with a range of 0 to 9. The average
firm size (
Size
) is 19.66 and ranges from 14.46 to 25.58. The average leverage ratio is 0.55
and ranges from 0.02 to 5.12. In general, Table 3 demonstrates that there is considerable
variation in the firm-specific characteristics.
Table 2 also reports the statistics on dividend payout ratios. The mean (median)
dividends/sales ratio is 2.39% (1.42%), that of the dividends/operating cash flow ratio is
19.94% (16.45%), that of the dividends/market value of equity ratio is 2.42% (2.01%),
and that of the dividends/earnings ratio is 39.43% (34.64%). In all cases, the mean
dividend ratio is greater than the median dividend ratio, which implies that a few firms
pay high dividends.