Abstract
Several theories have been documented on the relevance and irrelevance of dividend policy. Many researchers continue to come up with different findings on the relevance ofdividend policy to the value of firms. In this paper, after an analysis of the different dividend pay-outs offered by Italian and Polish firms, we aim to understand the main factors thatdetermine the dividend policies of listed companies in Italy and Poland. In order to analyse this policy, we extract data from a wide sample of firms selected from the equity markets of the Italian and Polish stock exchanges. We use descriptive statistics and statistical regressions. The analysis is developed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS).
 The study reaches findings that are of great relevance to scholars and investors investigating dividend issues. The paper finds that there are many differences between Italian andPolish dividend policies; in particular, the dividend pay-out is mostly determined by the dividend yield and liquidity in Polish firms, while it is heavily influenced by profitabilityand leverage in Italian firms.
Highlights
This paper presents the findings of a comparative study of dividend policies in Italy and Poland
We have studied the following regressors as they should influence the dividend pay-out ratio for several reasons: yield is a measure of shareholders’ return per unit; size measures the size of the firms; ROE measures the profitability of the firms; DROE measures the persistency of the profitability of the firms; leverage measures the leverage of the firms; value measures the market value of the firms; liquidity measures the liquidity of the firms
We find that the dividend pay-out ratio for the Italian and Polish firms is influenced by dividend yield and the natural logarithm of total assets
Summary
This paper presents the findings of a comparative study of dividend policies in Italy and Poland It examines panel data from the constituent stocks of Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) All-Share of the Italian stock market and Warsaw Exchange Index (WIG) of the Polish stock market. FTSE All-Share includes approximately 85% of listed companies on the Borsa Italiana, while WIG includes approximately 80% of the companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) This is why the findings obtained using data from FTSE All-Share and WIG present the results that can represent the entire stock exchange markets in Italy and Poland. Since 2008, this ratio has been constantly growing[3] Such fluctuations in dividend-paying companies’ ratio is coherent with the business cycle, when in the course of one year (2008), domestic companies on the WSE lost nearly half of their value due to panic withdrawal of foreign investors.
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