Exploring New Aspects of Corporate Dividend Policy: Case of an Emerging Nation

The present study focuses on how various firm characteristics influence their dividend payout policies. The study finds empirical evidence with regard to primarily two aspects of corporate dividend decisions—dividend increase and decrease, whose exploration is inadequate in the past literature. The random effect logistic regression has been considered in order to analyze the panel dataset from 2001–2002 to 2021–2022 including 3739 listed Indian firms. The empirical models are formatted based on the relevant dividend-related theories in the Indian context such as the residual theory, transaction cost theory, signalling theory, etc. Further, additional tests are conducted regarding the robustness of the reported results. The empirical results document that firm size, profitability, promoter holdings, cash holdings, and life cycle have a favourable influence on the propensity of both increasing and decreasing dividend payouts. In contrast, earnings volatility, leverage, and free cash flow reduce firms’ tendency to increase and decrease dividend payments. These results indicate that higher liquidity and ownership concentration provide firms with greater financial flexibility to adjust their dividend policies as per their prevailing opportunities. The findings of the study offer insightful information about how to arrange dividend policies with firm-specific traits which will be helpful for managers and investors to make better decisions.