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Does Comprehensive Income Influence Dividends? Empirical Evidence from Japan

  • Kunio Ito
  • Takuma KochiyamaEmail author
Chapter
First Online:
Part of the Advances in Japanese Business and Economics book series (AJBE, volume 6)

Abstract

This study examines whether comprehensive income (CI) and other comprehensive income (OCI) influence dividends of Japanese companies. While CI is considered to be the new “bottom line” of income statements of companies, the impact on dividends has not been examined empirically. Lintner (1956. The American Economic Review, 46, 97–113) and subsequent studies predict that only earnings that are more persistent and less volatile are related to dividends. Contrary to this prediction, our findings suggest that both CI and OCI have positive coefficients with dividend changes. Moreover, we further find that negative OCI is more likely to result in lower dividends. We propose several explanations for our findings.

Keywords

Comprehensive income Dividend Earnings persistence Fair value accounting Other comprehensive income 
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Copyright information

© Springer Japan 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Graduate School of Commerce and ManagementHitotsubashi UniversityKunitachiJapan

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