分红动因识别、机构持股与信号传递

Dividend Motivation Discrimination,Institutional Shareholding and Signal Transmission

按照传统公司金融理论,分红传达着公司具有投资价值的信号,但如果分红是监管政策的强制性要求呢?此时分红是否依然表达价值信号是一个值得商榷的问题。本文将有利于降低代理成本、保护中小投资者的分红动因定义为良性动因;将一味迎合监管要求进行逆向选择、损害公司价值的分红动因定义为不良动因,通过构建分红动因良性评价指标体系,考察机构投资者对上市公司分红动因良性水平的识别能力。研究发现:(1)机构投资者能够识别上市公司分红动因的良性水平,其持股比例与良性水平正相关;(2)不同类型的机构投资者对分红动因良性水平的重视程度存在差异。研究表明,即便是在监管机构强制性或半强制性的分红监管政策压力下,机构投资者仍然可以识别上市公司分红背后的真实动因,绕过表面现象、掌握价值信息,通过持股行为将价值投资理念传递并扩散到市场。

According to traditional corporate finance theories,dividend policy is an important financial decision of listed companies.Dividend conveys the signal that the company has investment value,and it is an effective mechanism for investors to judge the quality of the company.The stable and continuous dividend behavior of the company can help investors to anticipate the investment value and future earnings of the company accurately,make them hold the company’s stock for a long time,and form a virtuous circle between the company’s value and long-term investment returns.It contributes to construct the value investment concept and promote the healthy development of the securities market.The China Securities Regulatory Commission(CSRC)has issued a series of regulatory policies on dividends of listed companies since 2000,urging and guiding them to distribute dividends,in order to highlight the value of investment returns,dilute the volatility of stock price returns and cultivate the concept of healthy investment.The semi-mandatory dividend policy in 2008 and the differential dividend policy in 2013 are the key policies.The implementation of these policies has improved the dividend proportion and dividend level of listed companies,but there are also some problems such as threshold effect,compliance effect and regulatory paradox.Under the pressure of multiple internal and external factors and policies,some listed companies distort the original intention of regulatory policies.They use dividends as a mask to hide their motives for tunneling;while other companies have to pay dividends even if they are in the growing up period or investment period because of the rigid requirements of the dividends proportion in the policy.The phenomenon of dividend sometimes does not convey the value signal of the company,but the dividend motivation may contain the real value information.Compared with small and medium investors,institutional investors have better professional research ability,richer investment experience,more unobstructed information channels,larger capital scale and more active participation in the governance of listed companies,which play an important role in promoting the development of the securities market.If the dividend signals are effectively transmitted,they may be first recognized by institutional investors who have better ability and stronger motivation to discriminate the information of company value contained in its dividend motivation.The institutional investors to build investment faith based on the dividend motivation rather than dividend phenomena.Finally,they transfer and spread the value investment concept to other institutions and small investors.This paper starts from the actual financial situation,development prospects,conflicts of interest and other factors behind the dividend behavior of listed companies and constructs comprehensive indicators to discriminate the real motivation of the company’s dividend.We define the dividend motivation beneficial to the improvement of the company’s value,reduction of agency cost and protection of minority investors as benign motivation,and define the dividend motivation catering to regulatory requirements blindly to make adverse choices which are harmful to corporate value and corporate development as adverse motivation.On this basis,we examine the ability of institutional investors to discriminate the benign level of dividend motivation of listed companies,and the differences in the identification motivation of different types of institutional investors and the shareholding strategies interaction of them.Based on the public data of China A-share listed companies,we use stability of profitability,investment environment,life cycle stage,large shareholders shareholdings,ownership control,managerial power,institutional investors’shareholdings,media attention and peer influence to build benign evaluation on dividend motivations.The results are as follows.(1)Institutional investors can identify the benign level of dividend motivation of listed companies,the institutional investors’shareholdings increase with the score of benign motivation.(2)Different types of institutional investors pay different attention to the level of benign dividend motivation.Pressure-resistant institutional investors pay more attention to the level of benign dividend motivation,and this value investment concept will be transmitted to pressure-sensitive institutional investors through shareholding signals.In view of the potential endogeneity problem,we use instrumental variable method,propensity score matching and other methods as solutions.The regression results are robust.The research in this paper shows that institutional investors can identify the real motivation of dividend of listed companies even under the pressure of mandatory or semi-mandatory dividend policy,and their investment behavior is conducive to spreading and transmitting the value investment idea.At the same time,the research conclusions also provide empirical evidence for the relevant departments to promote the healthy and stable development of the capital market,and provide guidance and reference for institutional investors and other small and medium investors in value investment.