股权结构与股利政策 突尼斯股市证据.doc

外文文献翻译译文 一、外文原文 原文： Ownership Structure and Dividend Policy Evidence from the Tunisian Stock Market Abstract The aim of this paper is to identify and analyze the influence of shareholder ownership identity on dividend policy for a panel of Tunisian firms from 1995 to 2001.Our results indicate that Tunisian companies with highly concentrated ownership distribute more dividends. We find that there is a significant negative correlation between institutional ownership and distributed dividend level. The relation between dividend policy and state ownership is positive. Introduction Dividend payout decisions are one of the fundamental components of corporate policy and have been viewed as an issue of interest in the financial literature. Dividend, reward to stockholder for their investment and risk bearing, depends on various factors. Foremost of these determinants are level of profits, financing constraints, investment opportunities, size of the firm, and pressure from shareholders and regulatory authorities.The relationship between dividend policy and agency costs has been a recent development in the corporate finance theory focusing on the problem of how dividend policy can be used in reducing the agency cost. This association is based on the idea that monitoring of the firm and its management is helpful in reducing agency conflicts and in convincing the market that the managers are not in a position to abuse their position. The basic motivation for the agency models of dividends is that unless a firm’s profits are paid out as dividends, corporate managers may divert the cash flow for personal use or pursue unprofitable investment projects. The agency models on dividends can be divided into two distinct groups. The first range of theories considers dividend payouts as a solution of the agency conflict between managers and shareholders, as well as between controlling shareholders and outside shareholders. Contrary to this view, the second range of agency models arg