Communicating Private Information to the Equity Market Before a Dividend Cut: An Empirical Analysis
首次实证分析企业在可能削减股息前是否选择释放私人信息（即“准备市场”），并考察这种准备行为的后果，发现准备与未准备的企业存在显著差异，结果支持信号传递理论。
Abstract This paper presents the first empirical analysis of the choice of firms regarding whether to release private information (“prepare the market”) in advance of a possible dividend cut and the consequences of such market preparation. We use a hand-collected data set of dividend cutting firms, which allows us to distinguish between prepared and nonprepared dividend cutters and to test the implications of two alternative theories: the “signaling through market preparation” theory and the “stock return volatility reduction” theory. We document several important differences between prepared and nonprepared dividend cutters. Overall, our empirical results are consistent with the signaling theory.