abstract

• We investigate the effect of family-CEOs and CEO demographic characteristics on firms’ dividend policy in Latin America. We show that family-CEO firms pay less amount of dividends and invest more in capital expenditures than nonfamily-CEO firms do. Direct family ownership (ownership concentration) negatively (positively) affects dividend payouts. Among the CEO demographic characteristics, CEO tenure has a consistent and significant negative effect on the dividend payout. Firms in a strong corporate governance environment pay more dividends and are less likely to appoint family members as CEOs, suggesting that strong corporate governance forces firms to pay more dividends and restrains firms from appointing CEOs based on family ties. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.

authors

• Briano Turrent Guadalupe del Carmen
• Li M.
• Peng H.

publication date

• 2020-01-01

funding provided via

• Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, Paraguay, CONACYT  Grant
• Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, CONACYT: CB-2015/257211  Grant

published in

• Research in International Business and Finance  Journal

keywords

• Agency issue; Direct family ownership; Dividend policy; Family firms

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1016/j.ribaf.2019.101086

start page

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volume

• 51