摘要
This paper provides an analysis of the market reaction to dividend change announcements for publicly-traded, family-controlled firms. Family firms have a significantly lower proportion of independent directors than non-family firms, which is consistent with the idea that family members dominate the board of directors and that family shareholders are common in publicly-traded firms. The author analyzed 390 dividend change announcements in Portugal over the period from 1991 to 2010 using a panel data approach. The results show no evidence of a significant market reaction to dividend change announcements, providing no evidence in support of the dividend-signaling hypothesis in the context of family firms. This conclusion agrees with previous studies in which there was no distinction between family and non-family firms. Empirical results show that family firms engage in lower payouts than their non-family counterparts, giving some supports to the expropriation hypothesis. This finding may indicate that families expropriate the wealth of shareholders through lower dividends. This result is also consistent with the clientele theory of dividends.
