Institutional Investor Holding,Accounting Conservatism And Dividend Smoothing

In recent years,the research problem of dividend smoothing has attracted the continuous attention of many foreign scholars.Dividend smoothing has been one of the classic issues in the field of dividend distribution since Lintner’ s(1956)article was published.A continuous and stable cash dividend policy is not only related to the operation and financing of listed companies,but also an important way to transmit information to the capital market.However,due to the imperfect capital market system in my country,management and major shareholders often manipulate cash dividends to seek personal gain,which makes listed companies have a long-term "anomaly" of excessively high volatility in cash dividend payments,and dividend payments lack continuity and stability.,which has also attracted continued attention and policy intervention from the regulatory authorities.Since the Chinese government’s "extraordinary development of institutional investors",institutional investors have achieved rapid development,especially in the past ten years,institutional investors have become increasingly important in the company’s external governance mechanism while their influence has continued to increase.Existing research literature shows that institutional investors exhibit heterogeneity in terms of investment ideas,institutional types,etc.,which in turn have different impacts on corporate governance.As an important quality of accounting information,accounting conservatism can confirm bad news in accounting information in a more timely manner.Once a company has poor operating performance,it will be immediately transmitted to the capital market,and operators cannot "whitewash" financial statements.Therefore,external investors can timely respond to unreasonable decisions of management and major shareholders,including dividend policy,based on the sound accounting information received.This paper takes 2009-2020 Chinese Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies as samples,divides institutional investors into independent and dependent types according to whether they have close business relationships with the holding companies,and deeply analyzes the relationship between institutional shareholders’ shareholding and the relationship between institutional shareholders with different independence.The logical relationship between the dividend stability of listed companies,and the moderating effect of accounting conservatism on the above relationship.The research conclusions are as follows:(1)With the increase of shareholding ratio,independent institutional investors can supervise the management and major shareholders’ manipulation of cash dividends to improve the smoothing of dividends;dependent institutional investors prefer to allow companies to Limited funds can be continuously and stably invested in the business relationship between the two,and even collude with the management,which inhibits the smoothing of dividends.(2)Accounting conservatism can enhance the positive correlation between independent institutional investors and dividend smoothing,and weaken the negative correlation between dependent institutional investors and dividend smoothing.(3)Compared with state-owned enterprises,the above two kinds of independence Different institutional investors promote or inhibit the smoothing of dividends more significantly in private enterprises.(4)Further research found that there are differences in the impact of various independent institutional investors and dependent institutional investors on the smoothing of dividends.Combined with the actual situation in China,this paper studies the differential impact of institutional investors with different independence on the continuous and stable cash dividend policy of listed companies,so as to provide theoretical reference for later research;In addition,enrich the research on accounting conservatism as a regulatory variable,so that relevant departments and companies can provide reference for the application of accounting conservatism.