Abstract
This thesis investigates a number of inter-related issues pertaining to the relationship between corporate governance and dividend policy in China, including how the two-tier supervisory board and corporate ownership structures influence the likelihood of dividend payouts by listed firms in the Chinese stock market, whilst taking account of the influence of state-controlled and concentrated (or controlling) shareholders. A central aim of the thesis is to examine the influence of a combination of corporate governance and stock market factors, including investor sentiment and stock liquidity, in an attempt to uncover any mediating influences in the impact of two-tier supervisory board and corporate ownership structures on the propensity of the Chinese listed firms to pay cash dividends.The estimation methodologies employed are logit/probit, tobit and OLS regressions to examine the influence of the above factors on the propensity to pay dividends, on the level of dividend payments, and on changes in dividend payments, respectively, based on a sample of data for Chinese listed firms covering the period 2008-2016. The main results show that, first, the two-tier supervisory board structure has limited influence on dividend policy, except where the interests of controlling shareholders are involved; second, investor sentiment increases the incentives of state-controlled companies, but inhibits the incentives of controlling shareholders, to pay dividends; lastly, as China’s stock market operates under an opaque information environment with weak disclosure requirements, stock liquidity is found to have little impact on the ability of state-controlled and majority shareholders to influence dividend policy.
| Date of Award | 2020 |
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| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisor | Sailesh Tanna (Supervisor), Daniel Gyimah (Supervisor) & Mei Yu (Supervisor) |