Dividend policy and stock price volatility: Chinese evidence

This dissertation explored the impacts of dividend policy on stock price volatility in Chinese market. A sample of 322 Chinese companies is used during the period from 2000 to 2019. Dividend yield and dividend payout are used as measures for dividend policy and the results provided by the two measures are compared. The empirical results obtained by this dissertation suggest that the dividend payment policy is inversely correlated with stock price volatility and the dividend yield rather than the dividend payout is the dominant variable. This finding suggests that it is possible for the management to control the stock price volatility through changing dividend policy. This dissertation also observes a positive relationship between firm size and stock price volatility, which is contrast to the hypothesis. Allen and Rachim (1996) has provided an explanation for this positive correlation by relating firm size to leverage level. However, the results obtained by this dissertation demonstrate that leverage level is inversely correlated with stock price volatility, violating the assumption made by Allen and Rachim (1996)