TITLE:
Brazilian Companies’ Dividend Payout in a Political Uncertainty Scenario
AUTHORS:
Willian Marques Peixoto, Michele Nascimento Jucá
KEYWORDS:
Dividend Policy, Political Crisis, Impeachment, Logistic Regression
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Business and Management,
Vol.9 No.4,
July
5,
2021
ABSTRACT: The
analysis of the determinants of the dividend payout policy becomes even more
relevant in a context of crisis. In this scenario, companies wonder which
strategy shall prevail—either to keep the payout ratio
constancy to signal to the market positive aspects about themselves or to adapt
it to the external conjuncture, protecting themselves from future
uncertainties. This being so, this study aims at identifying the determinants
of the dividend payout policy, in the period
before and after the former President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, by
using logarithmic and probabilistic regression models. To this end, a sample of Brazilian non-financial publicly-held
companies is considered, whose data are obtained from the Capital IQ
base. As a result, the corporate dividend policy is identified as not being
affected by the market environment. Such a fact indicates that Brazilian
companies choose to maintain their dividend payout policy, even in scenarios of
political uncertainty. This study differs from the others for analyzing the
relationship between dividend payout decisions, whether in times of stability
or in political and economic crisis.