This article discusses the nature and treatment of dividends under a entity concept of corporate residual equity. It was hypothesized that the main objective of the corporation after its inception is to survive, and that the corporation strives to maintain both economic and financial competence in implementing this objective. It was argued that the only significant representation made by the corporation in soliciting stockholders' capital contributions was its agreement to pay dividends when and if declared, and that capital thus contributed becomes the corporation's equity. It was advanced that the treatment of several persistent problems in corporation accounting might be rendered more consistent if the nature of corporate residual equity as thus analyzed were accepted. The corporation, in soliciting stockholders' capital contributions, agrees to pay dividends when and if declared. This suggests that both the timing and the amount of dividends are at the corporation's discretion, and that stockholders cannot force the corporation to pay dividends even though earnings are ample.

We simultaneously address three basic issues regarding the corporation: the optimal scope of operation, the optimal financial structure, and the relationship between these two. The starting point is that financial structure serves as a bonding device on the managers' self‐interest behavior. The effectiveness of this bonding depends on the distribution of the firm's future cash flow, which in turn depends on the firm's scope. Our theory also links the firm's investment decisions to its operation scope. As empirical implications, the theory reconciles the failure of the 1960s U.S. conglomerates with the success of the Japanese Keiretsu .

We simultaneously address three basic issues regarding the corporation: the optimal scope of operation, the optimal financial structure, and the relationship between these two. The starting point is that financial structure serves as a bonding device on the managers' self-interest behavior. The effectiveness of this bonding depends on the distribution of the firm's future cash flow, which in turn depends on the firm's scope. Our theory also links the firm's investment decisions to its operation scope. As empirical implications, the theory reconciles the failure of the 1960s U.S. conglomerates with the success of the Japanese Keiretsu.

We show that mutual fund investors rely on simple signals and likely do not engage in sophisticated learning about managers’ alpha as widely believed. Simplistic performance chasing best explains aggregate flows to the mutual fund space and flows across funds. These results hold for both actively managed and passive index funds. Empirical patterns commonly interpreted as reflecting learning about managerial skill also appear in falsification tests and are mechanical. Our results are consistent with the view that, on average, households are homo sapiens with limited financial sophistication rather than hyperrational alpha-maximizing agents, as often assumed in the literature.

We show that mutual fund ratings generate correlated demand that creates systematic price fluctuations. Mutual fund investors chase fund performance via Morningstar ratings. Until June 2002, funds pursuing the same investment style had highly correlated ratings. Therefore, rating-chasing investors directed capital into winning styles, generating style-level price pressures, which reverted over time. In June 2002, Morningstar reformed its methodology of equalizing ratings across styles. Style-level correlated demand via mutual funds immediately became muted, significantly altering the time-series and cross-sectional variation in style returns.