股利传递了什么样的收益质量？外文翻译.doc

外文翻译 What do dividends tell us about earnings quality? Material Source: /content/?k=dividend+policy Author: Douglas J. Skinner and Eugene Soltes A longstanding literature in corporate finance, dating back to at least Miller and Modigliani (1961), addresses the information content of dividends hypothesis, under which managers’ dividend decisions convey information about their firms’ earnings prospects. There is a large empirical literature on this hypothesis, although there is little clear evidence in support of it. This paper reexamines the empirical validity of the information content of dividends hypothesis by providing evidence on the relation between dividends and reported earnings since the 1970s. The principal goal is to investigate whether dividends provide information about the quality of reported earnings. Following Lintner’s (1956) classic work, we know that managers are reluctant to increase dividends unless they believe that dividends can be sustained at the new level. Consequently, by committing to pay a dividend, managers can help convince investors of the quality of the earnings numbers that they report. This question seems especially important in recent years, during which there has been a substantial increase in reported losses, increasing dispersion in the cross-section of reported earnings, and increasing questions about the quality of reported earnings. The evidence presented here shows that dividends provide information about earnings quality, where high quality earnings are more likely to be sustainable in future periods. There have been important changes in corporate payout policy and in the nature of reported earnings over the last 30 years, both of which potentially affect the information content of dividends. With regard to earnings, recent papers document that (1) reported losses among public companies have become larger and more frequent (in fiscal 2001 aggregate Compustat earnings were negative and over h