IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finlet/v42y2021ics1544612320317244.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on dividends

Author

Listed:
  • Krieger, Kevin
  • Mauck, Nathan
  • Pruitt, Stephen W.

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the dividend payouts of publicly traded firms in the U.S. Out of nearly 1,400 dividend paying firms, 213 cut dividends and 93 omitted dividends entirely in the second quarter of 2020. This proportion of cuts and omissions is three to five times higher than any other quarter since 2015. The 2008 financial crisis was characterized by a high proportion of financial firms cutting dividends without much change in dividends for non-financials. Conversely, we find evidence of increased dividend cuts across all industries. The most common industry grouping, industrials, experienced one out of every six firms cutting dividends. Regression results indicate that net income and debt are determinants of firms cutting dividends in all periods, but the economic significance is much greater during the pandemic.

Suggested Citation

  • Krieger, Kevin & Mauck, Nathan & Pruitt, Stephen W., 2021. "The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on dividends," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 42(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:42:y:2021:i:c:s1544612320317244
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2020.101910
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612320317244
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.frl.2020.101910?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Krieger, Kevin & Lee, Bong-Soo & Mauck, Nathan, 2013. "Do senior citizens prefer dividends? Local clienteles vs. firm characteristics," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 150-165.
    2. Gerard Hoberg & Nagpurnanand R. Prabhala, 2009. "Disappearing Dividends, Catering, and Risk," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(1), pages 79-116, January.
    3. Malcolm Baker & Brock Mendel & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2016. "Dividends as Reference Points: A Behavioral Signaling Approach," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(3), pages 697-738.
    4. Eugene F. Fama, 2002. "Testing Trade-Off and Pecking Order Predictions About Dividends and Debt," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(1), pages 1-33, March.
    5. Floyd, Eric & Li, Nan & Skinner, Douglas J., 2015. "Payout policy through the financial crisis: The growth of repurchases and the resilience of dividends," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(2), pages 299-316.
    6. Brav, Alon & Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R. & Michaely, Roni, 2005. "Payout policy in the 21st century," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 483-527, September.
    7. Jensen, Michael C, 1986. "Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 323-329, May.
    8. Mark T. Leary & Roni Michaely, 2011. "Determinants of Dividend Smoothing: Empirical Evidence," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(10), pages 3197-3249.
    9. Baker, Malcolm & Wurgler, Jeffrey, 2004. "Appearing and disappearing dividends: The link to catering incentives," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 271-288, August.
    10. DeAngelo, Harry & DeAngelo, Linda & Skinner, Douglas J., 1994. "Accounting choice in troubled companies," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1-2), pages 113-143, January.
    11. Miller, Merton H & Rock, Kevin, 1985. "Dividend Policy under Asymmetric Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(4), pages 1031-1051, September.
    12. Bo Becker & Zoran Ivković & Scott Weisbenner, 2011. "Local Dividend Clienteles," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(2), pages 655-683, April.
    13. Michaely, Roni & Thaler, Richard H & Womack, Kent L, 1995. "Price Reactions to Dividend Initiations and Omissions: Overreaction or Drift?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(2), pages 573-608, June.
    14. DeAngelo, Harry & DeAngelo, Linda, 1990. "Dividend Policy and Financial Distress: An Empirical Investigation of Troubled NYSE Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(5), pages 1415-1431, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Pawel Sekula & Blazej Socha, 2022. "The Effects of Cash Dividend on Stock Prices during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Poland," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(3), pages 145-155.
    2. Zouhair Boumlik & Badia Oulhadj & Olivier Colot, 2023. "The Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Corporate Dividend Policy of Moroccan Listed Firms," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 16(8), pages 1-17, July.
    3. Danny Turkson & Nana Boakyewaa Addai & Farhat Chowdhury & Fatima Mohammed, 2021. "Government policies and firm performance in the COVID-19 pandemic era: a sectoral analysis," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(12), pages 1-22, December.
    4. Ntantamis, Christos & Zhou, Jun, 2022. "Corporate payout, cash holdings, and the COVID-19 crisis: Evidence from the G-7 countries," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    5. Huzaifa Shamsi, 2024. "Global Supply Chain Vulnerabilities: Assessing Firm Risk, Environmental Commitments, and Information Channels in the wake of COVID-19," IIMA Working Papers WP 2024-01-01, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Research and Publication Department.
    6. Suleman, Muhammad Tahir & Yaghoubi, Mona, 2022. "Infectious disease and corporate activities," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    7. Sakawa, Hideaki & Watanabel, Naoki & Uchida, Konari, 2024. "Do bank ties influence stock repurchases in a bank-based financial system during financial distress? A pre-registered report," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    8. Iyer, Subramanian Rama & Simkins, Betty J., 2022. "COVID-19 and the Economy: Summary of research and future directions," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 47(PB).
    9. Nasir Ali & Muhammad Zia Ur Rehman & Badar Nadeem Ashraf & Falik Shear, 2022. "Corporate Dividend Policies during the COVID-19 Pandemic," Economies, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-12, October.
    10. Chen, Xiaoqi & Li, Weiping & Torsin, Wouter & Tsang, Albert, 2024. "Dividend policy under mandatory ESG reporting," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    11. Xuelian Li & Shiu-Chieh Chiu & Jyh-Horng Lin & Yuxin Xie, 2024. "Assessing insurer guarantee cover and risk retention toward SDG 3: a structure-break down-and-out call valuation," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-10, December.
    12. Fasano, Francesco & Javier Sánchez-Vidal, F. & La Rocca, Maurizio, 2022. "The role of government policies for Italian firms during the COVID-19 crisis," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    13. Georgina Maria Tinungki & Powell Gian Hartono & Robiyanto Robiyanto & Agus Budi Hartono & Jakaria Jakaria & Lydia Rosintan Simanjuntak, 2022. "The COVID-19 Pandemic Impact on Corporate Dividend Policy of Sustainable and Responsible Investment in Indonesia: Static and Dynamic Panel Data Model Comparison," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(10), pages 1-23, May.
    14. Jaehee Gim & SooCheong Jang, 2024. "The determinants of aggressive share buybacks: An empirical examination of U.S. publicly traded restaurant firms," Tourism Economics, , vol. 30(1), pages 132-151, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thomas J. Chemmanur & Zeyu Sun & Jing Xie, 2024. "Keeping up with the Joneses: Corporate Dividends and Common Institutional Blockholders," Working Papers 202407, University of Macau, Faculty of Business Administration.
    2. Adra, Samer & Gao, Yang & Huang, Jin & Yuan, Jiayi, 2023. "Geopolitical risk and corporate payout policy," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    3. Cave, Joshua & Lancheros, Sandra, 2024. "Local peer influence on dividend payout decisions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    4. Kent Baker, H. & De Ridder, Adri, 2018. "Payout policy in industrial and financial firms," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 138-151.
    5. Leentje Moortgat & Jan Annaert & Marc Deloof, 2024. "The long-run persistence in dividend policy," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 18(3), pages 621-651, September.
    6. Roni Michaely & Stefano Rossi & Michael Weber & Michael Weber, 2017. "The Information Content of Dividends: Safer Profits, Not Higher Profits," CESifo Working Paper Series 6751, CESifo.
    7. Floyd, Eric & Li, Nan & Skinner, Douglas J., 2015. "Payout policy through the financial crisis: The growth of repurchases and the resilience of dividends," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(2), pages 299-316.
    8. Hayley Baker & Millicent Chang & Choy Yeing (Chloe) Ho, 2021. "Value of dividend signaling in uncertain times," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 21(4), pages 1419-1440, December.
    9. Jie He & Xuan Tian & Huan Yang & Luo Zuo, 2020. "Asymmetric Cost Behavior and Dividend Policy," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(4), pages 989-1021, September.
    10. Wang, Ling, 2020. "Unconventional monetary policy and stock repurchases: Firm-level evidence from a comparison between the United States and Japan," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    11. Andres, Christian & Doumet, Markus & Fernau, Erik & Theissen, Erik, 2015. "The Lintner model revisited: Dividends versus total payouts," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 56-69.
    12. du Jardin, Philippe & Séverin, Eric, 2011. "Dividend policy," MPRA Paper 44382, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Brav, Alon & Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R. & Michaely, Roni, 2005. "Payout policy in the 21st century," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 483-527, September.
    14. Adhikari, Binay K. & Agrawal, Anup, 2018. "Peer influence on payout policies," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 615-637.
    15. Hwang Hee Lee & Frederick Dongchuhl Oh, 2022. "The role of credit default swaps in determining corporate payout policy," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 51(2), pages 635-661, June.
    16. Maria Elisabete Duante Neves, 2017. "Payout and Firm's Catering," International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), vol. 0(4), pages 104-132.
    17. Francis, Bill B. & Samuel, Gilna & Wu, Qiang, 2023. "The impact of short selling on dividend smoothing," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    18. Décamps, Jean-Paul & Villeneuve, Stéphane, 2015. "Integrating profitability prospects and cash management," IDEI Working Papers 849, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    19. Ulrike Malmendier, 2018. "Behavioral Corporate Finance," NBER Working Papers 25162, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Li, Youwei & Liao, Ming & Liu, Yangke, 2023. "How does green credit policy affect polluting firms' dividend policy? The China experience," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    COVID-19; Dividends; Payout Policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets

    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:eee:finlet:v:42:y:2021:i:c:s1544612320317244. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/frl .

    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.