한국 기업의 배당유연화와 투자의 관계

This study investigates the influence of investment opportunities on the payout policy of Korean listed firms. We perform empirical analysis using panel data with reference to the methodology of Lintner (1956) and Aivazian et al. (2006). The empirical results of this study show that the level of dividend payout, and dividend smoothness increase in investment opportunities. These results support the conjecture that a firm with many investment opportunities uses dividends as a signaling mechanism because the firm has the incentive to deliver information about future cash flows. Furthermore, the positive relationship between investment opportunities and the level of dividend payout is more outstanding in firms with credit rating, meaning that firms raise debts only through banks prefer holding cash flows internally to prevent potential financial constraints incurred by opportunistic behavior of banks that monopolize information about their borrowers. On the other hand, the tendency of increasing dividend level according to investment opportunities was more evident in the firms issuing bonds, which is because firms that rely on bank borrowing instead of issuing bonds reduce dividends and increasing internal reserves in preparation of financial constraints that may arise due to the opportunistic behavior of banks with high bargaining power. The payout ratio of firms listed in KOSDAQ market is low, however, those firms’ dividend adjustment speed is high. KOSDAQ firms are generally small or middle size firms that frequently suffer by financial constraints, therefore, these have not enough financial slack to manage their payout policy. This could explain the low payout ratio of KOSDAQ market.