The Determinants of Dividend Policy: A Comparison between Firms Listed on the Italian Stock Exchange and on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (2001–2014)
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Abstrakt
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 of
dividend 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 that
determine 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 and
Polish 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 profitability
and leverage in Italian firms.
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