Ensaios sobre dividend smoothing no Brasil: determinantes e o efeito da internacionalização

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes a gap concerns to dividend smoothing in emerging market and international business literature. Therefore, we propose two essays. The first one analyzed the determinants of the dividend smoothing in Brazilian and Mexican companies. The sample consisted of all public non-financial companies in Brazil and Mexico that had financial and accounting data available in the Economâtica from 2006 to 2015, totaling 815 Brazilian companies and 194 Mexican companies. The results of the first essay show that: (i) in relation to the ownership structure, it is not accepted the hypothesis for Brazilian and Mexican companies that the greater the ownership concentration and the participation of institutional shareholders, the lower the practice of dividend smoothing; (ii) with respect to the effects of competition and information, the smaller the competition in the economy, the smaller the information asymmetry, so the companies tend to adjust their dividends faster practicing a lower dividend smoothing; (iii) with regard to investors and tax regime the higher the index, the less companies practice the dividend smoothing. The second essay analyzed the dividend smoothing in the internationalized companies of Brazil. The sample was the 815 Brazilian public companies listed on the BM&FBovespa with data available in the Economâtica from 2010 to 2015. The results of the second trial show that: (i) companies tend to stabilize their dividends because with the increase of external debt there are important risks in the current economic context, therefore, companies that seek resources abroad, to reduce informational asymmetry and agency problems, practice greater dividend smoothing; (ii) The effects of internationalization are more significant than the effects of the ownership structure on the dividend smoothing, due to the increase in exchange risk that leads to greater information asymmetry and higher agency costs; (iii) companies tend to acquire more debt in the foreign market than in the internal market tending to practice more dividend smoothing. Thus, it can be concluded that companies that raise funds abroad are more subject to information asymmetry and agency problems and therefore adopt more the practice of dividend smoothing.