The Influence of Corporate and Country-Level Governance on Firm Payout Policies: A Summary of Worldwide Market

Abstract

Since the pandemic in 2020, many firms paused or reduced their dividend payout as shifting to a defense strategy. However, the total dividends payout in the second quarter of 2022 by S&P500 firms is 11.8% more than that in the period of 2021 and share buyback spending is 11.7% higher. Thus, the companys payout policy is still a significant concern for investors. This research summarizes several findings on the interaction of payout policy with corporate governance and with country-level governance and discusses the dependence between these two factors. This research finds that country-level governance is positively related to a firms payout policy, and because of the correlation between firm-level and country-level governance, the interaction between firm-level governance and dividend policy varies with legal strength: in weak legal regimes, stronger corporate governance leads to higher dividend payout, and in strong legal regimes, they correlate in the opposite way, as the shock repurchase is preferred over dividend.