Dividends, Share Repurchases, and Tax Clienteles: Evidence from the 2003 Reductions in Shareholder Taxes
研究了2003年美国降低股息和资本利得税后，公司内部人调整投资组合以最大化税后收益，同时公司相应调整股息与股票回购政策，首次用联立方程估计股东和管理层的同时反应。
ABSTRACT: This study jointly evaluates firm-level changes in investor composition and shareholder distributions following a 2003 reduction in the dividend and capital gains tax rates for individuals. We find that directors and officers, but not other individual investors, rebalanced their portfolios to maximize after-tax returns in light of the new tax rules. We also find that firms adjusted their distribution policy (specifically, dividends versus share repurchases) in a manner consistent with the altered tax incentives for individual investors. To our knowledge, this is the first study to employ simultaneous equations to estimate both shareholder and managerial responses to the 2003 rate reductions. We find that the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimates are substantially stronger than OLS estimates, consistent with our expectation that investor and manager responses are simultaneously determined. Failure to estimate systems of equations may account for some of the weak and conflicting results from prior studies of the 2003 rate reductions.