IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jbfnac/v47y2020i1-2p218-252.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Payout policy, financial flexibility, and agency costs of free cash flow

Author

Listed:
  • Jacob Oded

Abstract

This paper explains how firms choose between dividends and open‐market repurchase programs, the prevailing method that firms use to disburse cash today. While earlier theories about payout policy are motivated by signaling, the motivation for payout in this paper is to prevent the waste of free cash by self‐interested insiders. In the model, dividends prevent free cash waste by forcing cash out, but result in underinvestment if the cash paid out is later needed for operations. Open‐market programs stimulate payout by providing personal gains to informed insiders that are associated with the firm's repurchase trade. Yet, they also avoid the underinvestment problem by leaving insiders the option to cancel the payout. Because their execution is optional, however, open‐market programs only partially prevent the waste of free cash. The model provides testable predictions that are generally consistent with the empirical evidence.

Suggested Citation

  • Jacob Oded, 2020. "Payout policy, financial flexibility, and agency costs of free cash flow," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1-2), pages 218-252, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jbfnac:v:47:y:2020:i:1-2:p:218-252
    DOI: 10.1111/jbfa.12407
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jbfa.12407
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jbfa.12407?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hui Liang James & Hongxia Wang, 2021. "Independent director tenure and dividends," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(5-6), pages 1057-1091, May.
    2. Nan‐Ting Kuo & Shu Li & Shiyun Zhai, 2022. "Institutional features and audit pricing of excess cash holdings: Do auditor liabilities beyond financial statement assurance matter?," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(9-10), pages 1581-1604, October.
    3. Ed-Dafali, Slimane & Patel, Ritesh & Iqbal, Najaf, 2023. "A bibliometric review of dividend policy literature," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    4. Li, Jianjun & Wu, Zhouyi & Yu, Kaijia & Zhao, Wei, 2024. "The effect of industrial robot adoption on firm value: Evidence from China," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    5. Zhang, Huilin & Boubaker, Sabri & Ni, Xiaoran, 2024. "Litigating payouts or not? Evidence from universal demand laws," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 136-153.
    6. Ni‐Yun Chen & Chi‐Chun Liu, 2021. "Share repurchases and market signaling: Evidence from earnings management," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 21(4), pages 1203-1224, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jbfnac:v:47:y:2020:i:1-2:p:218-252. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0306-686X .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.