SHARE REPURCHASES AND THE FLEXIBILITY HYPOTHESIS
利用金融危机作为自然实验，检验股票回购是否比股利更具灵活性。发现回购削减企业比例更高，且市场与经营表现更好。
Abstract Using the financial crisis as a natural experiment, we test whether repurchases are more flexible than dividends. We document that the proportion of repurchasing firms that reduced repurchase payouts is greater than the proportion of dividend payers that reduced their dividends during the financial crisis period. We find that the market performance of repurchase‐reducing firms is better than that of dividend‐reducing firms over the financial crisis period. Finally, we find that the operating performance of share repurchasers is better than dividend payers during the financial crisis and postcrisis periods. Overall, we conclude that share repurchases are more flexible than dividends.