The Impact Of Equity Incentives On Corporate Dividend Policy

Equity incentive as an important means to coordinate the interests of shareholders and managers in China's capital market is gradually play an important role.After 10 year's development to the end of 2015,in Shanghai and Shenzhen Main board market,a total of 519 companies successfully implemented equity incentive program.Dividend distribution is an important basis for safeguarding the stable and healthy development of China's securities market.It is also the focus of scholars and regulators.Foreign research on the impact of equity incentive on the distribution of dividends for many years.But for China,until 2006,academic papers about equity incentive has gradually increased,but the samples are mostly limited to 2012 and some papers did not control endogenous problems which may lead to bias.Therefore,this article analysis 413 listed companies which announced the implementation of equity incentive,including a total of 465 equity incentive samples.In order to draw a comprehensive and robust conclusion,this article use Propensity Score Matching(PSM)to find the match samples in China's 2263 non-financial listed companies on the main board.This paper chooses corporate governance,scale,liability,growth and executive compensation as matching variables,and uses three different matching methods,including nearest neighbor matching,radius matching and kernel density matching,to examine the results.In this paper,we analysis the impact of equity incentive on cash dividend payout tendency,cash dividend payout ratio,stock dividend payment tendency and stock dividend payout rate.The results show that equity incentive has a positive effect on cash dividend and stock dividend distribution,and stock dividend payout ratio.But there is a negative effect on the cash dividend distribution rate,but not significant.In view of the phenomenon that there is a negative effect on the distribution rate of cash dividends,there are some differences with some of the existing papers.This paper will further analysis the 465 samples from the perspective of equity incentive and the implementation of equity incentive with Tobit model analysis.The results show that the restrictive stock has a positive effect on the cash dividend distribution,but the incentive method of the option mode is not obvious.The size of the equity incentive also has a positive effect on the distribution of cash dividends.Finally,the conclusion and policy suggestions of this paper are as follows:(1)The listed companies that implement equity incentive have higher cash dividend distribution tendency and stock dividend distribution tendency than untreated companies;(2)the implementation of equity incentive of listed companies have higher stock dividend distribution rate;(3)The cash dividend distribution rate of listed companies with equity incentive is lower than that of non-implemented companies,but the statistical effect is not significant.(4)The restrictive stock incentive tool has a positive effect on the cash dividend distribution of listed companies,and the effect of the incentive method is not obvious,which provides the policy basis for the SFC to pay attention to the equity incentive tool and perfect the equity incentive plan.(5)The scale of equity incentive has a positive effect on the cash dividend distribution of listed companies,and provides the policy basis for the SFC to further promote the scale of stock options.