This paper analyzes the behavior of stock prices around ex-dividend days after the implementation of the 1986 Tax Reform Act that dramatically reduced the difference between the tax treatment of realized long-term capital gains and dividend income in 1987 and completely eliminated the differential in 1988. The author shows that this tax change had no effect on the ex-dividend stock price behavior, which is consistent with the hypothesis that long-term individual investors have no significant effect on ex-day stock prices during this time period. The results indicate that the activity of short-term traders and corporate traders dominates the price determination on the ex-day.

Roni Michaely, Ex-Dividend Day Stock Price Behavior: The Case of the 1986 Tax Reform Act, The Journal of Finance, Vol. 46, No. 3, Papers and Proceedings, Fiftieth Annual Meeting, American Finance Association, Washington, D. C., December 28-30, 1990 (Jul., 1991), pp. 845-859

This paper analyzes the behavior of stock prices around ex‐dividend days after the implementation of the 1986 Tax Reform Act that dramatically reduced the difference between the tax treatment of realized long‐term capital gains and dividend income in 1987 and completely eliminated the differential in 1988. We show that this tax change had no effect on the ex‐dividend stock price behavior, which is consistent with the hypothesis that long‐term individual investors have no significant effect on ex‐day stock prices during this time period. The results indicate that the activity of short‐term traders and corporate traders dominates the price determination on the ex‐day.

Many dividend theories imply that changes in dividends have information content about the future earnings of the firm. The authors investigate this implication and find only limited support for it. Firms that increase dividends in year 0 have experienced significant earnings increases in years -1 and 0, but show no subsequent unexpected earnings growth. Also, the size of the dividend increase does not predict future earnings. Firms that cut dividends in year 0 have experienced a reduction in earnings in year 0 and in year -1, but these firms go on to show significant increases in earnings in year 1. However, consistent with Lintner's model on dividend policy, firms that increase dividends are less likely than nonchanging firms to experience a drop in future earnings. Thus, their increase in concurrent earnings can be said to be somewhat 'permanent'. In spite of the lack of future earnings growth, firms that increase dividends have significant (though modest) positive excess returns for the following three years.

We examine the relation between institutional holdings and payout policy in U.S. public firms. We find that payout policy affects institutional holdings. Institutions avoid firms that do not pay dividends. However, among dividend‐paying firms they prefer firms that pay fewer dividends. Our evidence indicates that institutions prefer firms that repurchase shares, and regular repurchasers over nonregular repurchasers. Higher institutional holdings or a concentration of holdings do not cause firms to increase their dividends, their repurchases, or their total payout. Our results do not support models that predict that high dividends attract institutional clientele, or models that predict that institutions cause firms to increase payout.

Contrary to the implications of many payout theories, we find that announcements of open‐market share repurchase programs are not followed by an increase in operating performance. However, we find that repurchasing firms experience a significant reduction in systematic risk and cost of capital relative to non‐repurchasing firms. Further, consistent with the free cash‐flow hypothesis, we find that the market reaction to share repurchase announcements is more positive among those firms that are more likely to overinvest. Finally, we find evidence to indicate that investors underreact to repurchase announcements because they initially underestimate the decline in cost of capital.

We show that repurchases have not only became an important form of payout for U.S. corporations, but also that firms finance their share repurchases with funds that otherwise would have been used to increase dividends. We find that young firms have a higher propensity to pay cash through repurchases than they did in the past and that repurchases have become the preferred form of initiating a cash payout. Although large, established firms have generally not cut their dividends, they also show a higher propensity to pay out cash through repurchases. These findings indicate that firms have gradually substituted repurchases for dividends. Our results also suggest that before 1983, regulatory constraints inhibited firms from aggressively repurchasing shares.

This paper issues a warning that compounding daily returns of the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) equal-weighted index can lead to surprisingly large biases. The differences between the monthly returns compounded from the daily tapes and the monthly CRSP equal-weighted indices is almost 0.43 percent per month, or 6 percent per year. This difference amounts to one-third of the average monthly return, and is large enough to reverse the conclusions of a paper using the daily tape to compute the return on the benchmark portfolio. We also investigate the sources of these biases and suggest several alternative strategies to avoid them.

This article investigates market reactions to initiations and omissions of cash dividend payments. Consistent with prior literature, the authors find that the magnitude of short-run price reactions to omissions are greater than for initiations. In the year following the announcements, prices continue to drift in the same direction, though the drift following omissions is stronger and more robust. This postdividend initiation/omission price drift is distinct from and more pronounced than that following earnings surprises. A trading rule employing both samples earns positive returns in twenty-two out of twenty-five years. The authors find little evidence for clientele shifts in either sample.

Empirical studies of the modern theories of bond pricing typically choose proxies for the state variables in a rather arbitrary fashion. This paper empirically analyzes the question of the optimal spot rates to use as state variables. The authors' findings indicate that the four-year spot rate serves as the best proxy in the one-state-variable model. In the case of the two-state-variables model, the six-year rate and eight-month rate are identified as best. Tests of the out-of-sample prediction ability indicate that their model is superior to F. R. Macaulay's duration model and alternative proxies for state variables.