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Review of Financial Studies Vol. 27 No. 4 2014

Internal Capital Market and Dividend Policies: Evidence From Business Groups

Radhakrishnan Gopalan1; Vikram K. Nanda2; Amit Seru3

1 Washington University in St. Louis · 2 Georgia Institute of Technology · 3 University of Chicago

Abstract

We argue that internal capital market imperatives of business groups i.e., reallocation of capital across group firms, influences an affiliated firm's dividend policy. Intuition is developed in a model in which business group insiders distribute dividends from cash-rich firms and use their share of payout to invest in other affiliated firms. Employing multi-country panel-data, we find support for this channel: Dividends by a group firm are positively related with equity-financed investments by its affiliated firms. Results are corroborated by exploiting variation in a firm's investment opportunity generated by changes in import tariff policy: a shock to investment opportunity of an affiliated firm is propagated to dividend policies of other firms in its group.

DOI
10.1093/rfs/hhu004
Volume
27
Issue
4
Pages
1102-1142
Language
en
Sources
openalex crossref

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