In their seminal paper, Miller and Modigliani (1961) propose the dividend irrelevance hypothesis showing that,
in a perfect capital market, dividend policy does not affect firm value. In practice, however, capital market is
neither perfect nor complete due to various factors such as transaction costs, taxes, information asymmetries, and agency problems. These market imperfections have significant impacts on corporate dividend policies, which, in turn, significantly affect the stock price because investors are concerned about their return on investment. Over many years since Miller and Modigliani (1961), a vast number of theoretical and empirical studies have been developed to explain why and how firms pay dividends. However, the existing literature on dividend policy is replete with the evidence from developed economies while corporate dividend policies in emerging countries can be very different from those in countries with developed capital markets. Hence, researchers have recently paid more attentions to dividend policies in emerging markets and increasingly recognized that different institutional context can affect corporate dividend policies differently (e.g., La Porta et al., 2000; Aivazian et al.,2003).