CEO marital status and dividend policy

Authors

Md Noman Hossain
Monika K. Rabarison, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Brandon Ater, The University of Texas Rio Grande ValleyFollow
Christian K. Sobngwi, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-2023

Abstract

We investigate whether and how CEO marital status is related to dividend policy. We find that firms run by single CEOs are less likely to pay dividends. Further analyses reveal that the aforementioned relation is stronger for single CEOs who are more risk-seeking, have compensation packages with lower pay-performance sensitivity, are less conservative, or are less engaged in corporate social responsibility activities. Our results hold in multiple robustness and endogeneity tests, including propensity score matching, difference-in-differences estimation, and an instrumental variable regression. Overall, our findings contribute to the literature highlighting the importance of CEOs' personal attributes for corporate decisions.

Comments

Original published version available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2022.102342

Recommended Citation

Hossain, M.N., Rabarison, M.K., Ater, B. and Sobngwi, C.K., 2023. CEO marital status and dividend policy. Journal of Corporate Finance, 78, p.102342. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2022.102342

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Publication Title

Journal of Corporate Finance

DOI

10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2022.102342