Voluntary dividend announcements in Japan

摘要: Abstract Japan offers us a valuable opportunity to examine issues related dividend announcements under an institutional setup quite different from that in the U.S., such as voluntary nature of announcements, and mutual-shareholding among corporations. We provide evidence on two dimensions announcements: (1) What are major determinants announcements? (2) How does stock market react these Our results show larger firms keiretsu make more frequently than smaller non-keiretsu firms. However, with greater information asymmetry, proxied by higher insider shareholding return variance, less likely disclose information. In disclosure, managers exhibit bias toward releasing good news. Due discretionary bias, reaction no change is significantly negative, which contrast U.S.