The Impact of Board Gender Diversity on Dividend Payouts in EU Countries: A Quantitative Study
(2024) IBUH19 20241Department of Business Administration
- Abstract
- This bachelor thesis was conducted through a quantitative study on the relationship between board gender diversity in publicly listed companies active in the EU and said firms’ dividend payouts. It also investigated how this relationship seemed to have been influenced by country-specific factors that were not accounted for through the chosen explanatory variables. It hypothesizes that there would be a positive relationship between board gender diversity and dividend payouts. By carrying out a panel data regression analysis on a final sample of 369 firms from 15 EU countries over a nine-year period, a fixed effect least squares dummy variable model confirmed the hypothesized relationship. The results are consistent with agency theory, the... (More)
- This bachelor thesis was conducted through a quantitative study on the relationship between board gender diversity in publicly listed companies active in the EU and said firms’ dividend payouts. It also investigated how this relationship seemed to have been influenced by country-specific factors that were not accounted for through the chosen explanatory variables. It hypothesizes that there would be a positive relationship between board gender diversity and dividend payouts. By carrying out a panel data regression analysis on a final sample of 369 firms from 15 EU countries over a nine-year period, a fixed effect least squares dummy variable model confirmed the hypothesized relationship. The results are consistent with agency theory, the literature on dividend payouts, and gender socialization theory, which, taken together, posit that women on average possess characteristics that make them consider the agency problem between shareholders and managers more thoroughly, thus paying higher dividends as a way to minimize agency costs to the shareholders. The main contribution of this paper lies in demonstrating that board gender diversity positively affects shareholders through the increased likelihood of dealing with agency problems via the mechanism of dividend payouts. It complements past research particularly by focusing its measure of diversity on distributional equality between genders on the board and extending the geographical scope over a variety of countries. Finally, it directs future research toward examining more closely the impact of national characteristics on the examined relationship. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9164943
- author
- Kollegger-Steger, Raphael LU ; Svenningsson, Adam LU and Favero Porto, Valentina LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- IBUH19 20241
- year
- 2024
- type
- M2 - Bachelor Degree
- subject
- keywords
- Board Gender Diversity, Board Gender Composition, Dividend Payouts, Dividend Payout Policy, European Union, Agency Theory, Gender Socialization Theory
- language
- English
- id
- 9164943
- date added to LUP
- 2024-06-20 13:04:53
- date last changed
- 2024-06-20 13:04:53
@misc{9164943,
abstract = {{This bachelor thesis was conducted through a quantitative study on the relationship between board gender diversity in publicly listed companies active in the EU and said firms’ dividend payouts. It also investigated how this relationship seemed to have been influenced by country-specific factors that were not accounted for through the chosen explanatory variables. It hypothesizes that there would be a positive relationship between board gender diversity and dividend payouts. By carrying out a panel data regression analysis on a final sample of 369 firms from 15 EU countries over a nine-year period, a fixed effect least squares dummy variable model confirmed the hypothesized relationship. The results are consistent with agency theory, the literature on dividend payouts, and gender socialization theory, which, taken together, posit that women on average possess characteristics that make them consider the agency problem between shareholders and managers more thoroughly, thus paying higher dividends as a way to minimize agency costs to the shareholders. The main contribution of this paper lies in demonstrating that board gender diversity positively affects shareholders through the increased likelihood of dealing with agency problems via the mechanism of dividend payouts. It complements past research particularly by focusing its measure of diversity on distributional equality between genders on the board and extending the geographical scope over a variety of countries. Finally, it directs future research toward examining more closely the impact of national characteristics on the examined relationship.}},
author = {{Kollegger-Steger, Raphael and Svenningsson, Adam and Favero Porto, Valentina}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{The Impact of Board Gender Diversity on Dividend Payouts in EU Countries: A Quantitative Study}},
year = {{2024}},
}