국내 및 외국인 기관투자자와 한국기업의 배당정책

Abstract

We examine whether domestic and foreign institutional ownership for Korean firms have any association with the dividend policy. We use dividend payout ratio and dividend yield as the proxy for dividend policy, and various types of institutional ownership by their national origin and investment horizon. We use the method of Yan and Zhang(2009) to calculate investment horizon. We found the following empirical results. First, we found that total institutional ownership has no significant relation with dividend payout ratio and dividend yield. The results for domestic or foreign institutional ownership are not significant, either. Second, when we divide institutional ownership by investment horizon, we found a positive and significant relation between long-term institutional ownership and dividend payout ratio. By contrast, short-term institutional ownership has no significant relation with dividend payout ratio and yield. Third, when we consider both investment horizon and national origin, long-term domestic institutional ownership shows a significantly positive relation with dividend payout ratio. However, short-term foregin institutional ownership has a significantly negative relation with dividend payout ratio. Accordingly we interpret the results as an evidence that long-term domestic institutions play a proper monitoring role, thereby reducing agency costs and increasing dividend payouts. In contrast, short-term foreign institutions pursue short-term capital gain rather than dividend. Overall, the main results are consistent with the hypothesis that long-term institutional ownership would lead to higher dividend payout ratio. Our findings have important implications for Korean firms that they should appeal long-term institutional investors as a major shareholder base, and enhance corporate governance structure.