The impact of board gender composition on dividend payouts

Chen, Jie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4076-7121, Leung, Woon Sau ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0389-2126 and Goergen, Marc ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4391-2651 2017. The impact of board gender composition on dividend payouts. Journal of Corporate Finance 43 , pp. 86-105. 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2017.01.001

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Abstract

This paper investigates whether female independent directors are more likely to impose high dividend payouts. We find evidence that firms with a larger fraction of female directors on their board have greater dividend payouts. This finding is robust to alternative econometric specifications, and alternative measures of dividend payouts and female board representation. The positive effect of board gender composition on dividends remains when we employ propensity score matching, the instrumental variable approach, and difference-in-differences approach to address potential endogeneity concerns. Furthermore, we find that board gender composition significantly increases the dividend payout only for firms with weak governance, suggesting that female directors use dividend payouts as a governance device.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Business (Including Economics)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HG Finance
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Gender composition; Board of directors; Dividend payout; Corporate governance
Additional Information:	This is an open access article under the CCBY license
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	0929-1199
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	19 December 2016
Date of Acceptance:	3 January 2017
Last Modified:	04 May 2023 20:06
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/96988

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