Capital Market Response to the Change in the Dividend Policy: The Case of Slovenian Stock Market

Abstract

The three basic dividend policy theories have a completely different approach to describing the influence of dividends payment on stock price, and on the value of the company. Numerous studies conducted in this area have led to almost as many derived dividend policy theories, which are more or less related to the basic three. As one of them Wang, Manry & Wandler (2011) specify the dividend signalling theory, which is based particularly on the assumption of the asymmetry of information between the company management and the shareholders and in recent decades it has been studied by many authors, who mostly concluded that dividend increase has a positive stock price reaction, and vice versa, that dividend decrease results in stock price falls (as cited in Ross, 1977; Leland and Pyle, 1977; Grinblatt et al., 1984; Baker and Phillips, 1993; Rankine and Stice, 1997; Bechmann and Raaballe, 2007). For the purposes of our analysis we adopted the methodology of foreign researches and checked the existence of the dividend signalling theory in the Slovenian stock market. The Slovenian stock market is one of developing markets, and is particularly specific due to its small size and illiquidity. Our research resulted in no statistically significant stock price increases from company dividend increases, whereby we have refuted the research hypothesis and, consequently, the dividend signalling theory in the Slovenian stock market in the described period.