Dividend Smoothing and Debt Ratings
研究发现，经常进入公开债券市场的公司更可能支付股利并采取平滑政策，而仅依赖私人债务的公司则更倾向于剩余股利政策。
Abstract We find that firms that regularly access public debt (bond) markets are more likely to pay a dividend and subsequently follow a dividend smoothing policy than firms that rely exclusively on private (bank) debt. In particular, firms with bond ratings follow a traditional Lintner (1956) style dividend smoothing policy, where the influence of the prior dividend payment is very strong and the current dividend is relatively insensitive to current earnings. In contrast, firms without bond ratings flow through more of their earnings as dividends and display very little dividend smoothing behavior. In effect, they seem to follow a residual dividend policy.