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The hypothesis that dividend policy serves as a signaling mechanism and also serves to control managerial opportunism is usually supported by empirical studies showing that firms in developed countries (e.g. the USA) smooth their dividends as noted by Lintner (Am. Econ. Rev. 46 (1956) 97). However, the theoretical justification for these results largely stems from models based on arms length contracting in capital markets. In contrast, most emerging markets have a bank centered financial system, where contracting is not normally at arms length. Consequently, this paper compares the dividend policy of companies from eight emerging markets to the policies adopted by 100 US firms over the same period. Firms in these emerging markets have more unstable dividend payments than their US counterparts. Regression results indicate that dividends are much less sensitive to past dividends. These results support the substitute view of dividend policy on the premise that the institutional structures of these developing countries make dividends a less viable mechanism for signaling and for reducing agency costs than for their US counterparts operating in more highly developed arms length capital markets.

How firms determine their dividend policy has been a puzzle to financial economists for many years. Miller and Modigliani (1961) (M&M), showed that under certain assumptions the payment of a cash dividend should have no impact on a firm's share price. M&M assumed that the firm's investment is fixed, since all positive net present value projects will be financed regardless of the firm's dividend policy. Consequently, the firm's future free cash flow is independent of the firm's financial policies, so that the dividend is the firm's residual free cash flow. The fact that this result flies in the face of casual empiricism, not to mention most empirical studies,1 was called the dividend puzzle by Fischer Black (1976). Several strands of research have developed to explain actual dividend policies, focusing on relaxing some of the M&M assumptions. Brennan (1970), for example, relaxed the equal tax assumption. However, in Brennan's model the higher the dividend the higher the tax penalty. Consequently, a tax wedge drives up the pre-tax investor required rate of return for high payout firms. Despite extensive empirical investigation this hypothesis does not seem to be borne out by the data.2 Moreover, Poterba (1987) has documented the remarkable stability of dividend payouts throughout periods of extensive tax changes in the USA. While the impact of taxes remains inconclusive, increasing attention has been given to the problem of information asymmetries. Miller and Modigliani (1961) explicitly suggested that dividend changes could have an informational impact. Subsequent research by Watts (1973) and others have documented that initiating a dividend increases the share price and cutting a dividend generally leads to a price decline. 3 Information asymmetries have also given rise to agency cost explanations for paying dividends. With the increased separation of ownership from control, managers frequently face very little supervision. In this context, a commitment to a high dividend policy attenuates managerial opportunism and forces the firm to frequently interact with the capital market. A central message of asymmetric information models is that dividend payments are important both as a pre-commitment device to reduce agency costs and as a signal of management's expectations of future earnings. Both models have been used to justify Lintner's observation (1956) that actual dividend policies tend to follow a slowly adaptive process. However, the viability of both of these mechanisms depends on other aspects of the institutional and contracting environment. For example, if the firm is closely held there might be easier and less costly ways of communicating information than by paying a dividend. Similarly, managerial control issues may be less severe in a bank centric market characterized by constant monitoring of corporate activities by lending officers. There are a variety of ways of characterizing institutional differences, but Mayer (1990) hit on one key difference: the “Anglo-Saxon” capital markets model compared to the “Continental-German-Japanese” banking model. The critical difference as Rajan (1992) pointed out is that the capital markets perspective relies on arms length contracting by “uninformed” investors, whereas bank debt is a contract between an informed investor frequently privy to confidential information not available in the capital market. We would expect these marked differences in the organization of the financial system to impact corporate financial policy, particularly the use of dividends as both a signaling and pre-commitment device. In this paper, we take advantage of the recent development of an international database by the World Bank that allows for cross-country comparisons of dividend policy. Financial data is available for the largest firms from eight emerging market countries: Korea, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, Turkey and Zimbabwe between 1980 and 1990. We analyze the dividend policies of firms from these countries, as well as the key institutional features of each country, and compare them with a control sample of US firms. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 discusses the main arguments underlying our testable hypotheses; Section 3 describes the database and macro financial features of each country; Sections 4 and 5 discuss the empirical results, and Section 6 adds some.

This paper examined the dividend behavior of companies in eight emerging markets between 1980 and 1990, and compared the results to those for 100 US companies. We reached the following conclusions: 1 Generally it is more difficult to predict dividend changes for these emerging market firms. The quality of firms cutting dividends were much more similar to those increasing dividends, than for the US control sample. 2 Regression results suggested that current dividends are much less sensitive to past dividends than for the US control sample of firms. 3 The Lintner model does not work very well for this sample of emerging market firms, with adjusted R squares of the Lintner regression model well below what we expect for US firms. These results provide support for the substitute theory of dividends over the complement theory in our sample of emerging market firms. In other words, the results support the premise that the institutional structures of these developing countries make corporate dividend policy a less viable mechanism for signaling future earnings, and for reducing agency costs than for US firms operating in capital markets with arm's length transactions.