Utdelningar och Lokal Klientel-Effekt : En Studie på den Svenska Aktiemarknaden

Sammanfattning: Despite being a well-documented topic, dividends remain polarizing in academia. Whilst early 21st century research suggested that the use of dividends would be overtaken by stock repurchases recent reports indicate that the use of dividends is increasing. One theorized cause for this discrepancy is the Local Clientele Effect. In order to examine local firms’ dividend decisions two hypotheses were formed to test the main positions on the matter: 1, the age of investors affect payout policy and 2, firm characteristics affect payout policy. With the use of a multiple variable linear regression our results indicated that the age of investors did have a significant positive effect on dividends and that firm size and Book-to-Market ratio had significant positive effects on dividends. The conclusions drawn from the results were that while local clientele effect exists to some degree on the Swedish stock market firm characteristics also play a role in firm payout policy.