Research Summary
Research Summary
Financing Payouts
Description
Despite the obvious interest in payout policy, no paper to date has systematically analyzed how payouts are funded, perhaps because the answer might have appeared just too obvious: payouts are funded with free cash flow — at least over long enough time periods. In stark contrast to this commonly held view, in joint work with Roni Michaely and Martin Schmalz we find that firms rely on the capital markets to finance a third of aggregate payouts, mainly with debt but also with equity. Such “financed payouts” are widespread, persistent, prevalent both among dividend-paying and repurchasing firms, and large in magnitude. Standard interpretations of agency or signaling theories are unable to explain this behavior. We argue, however, that our findings are consistent with a reinterpretation of ideas related to agency conflicts and a holistic view of corporate financial strategy that examines payout and capital structure decisions jointly.