Corporate Risk Management and Dividend Signaling Theory

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of corporate risk management on dividend policy. We extend the signaling framework of Bhattacharya (1979) by including the possibility of hedging the future cash flow. We find that the higher the hedging level, the lower the incremental dividend. This result is in line with the purported positive relation between information asymmetry and dividend policy (e.g., Miller and Rock, 1985) and the assertion that risk management alleviates the information asymmetry problem (e.g., DaDalt et al., 2002). Our theoretical model has testable implications.